The Leeds Thread

[Derry Alli]

23 hours ago, Ludo*1 said:

Leeds owner is talking about trying to sign Edson Cavani.

Tried to sign Zlatan last year. It won't come to fruition. 

[WALMOT]

https://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/international/scotland-and-leeds-great-david-harvey-tracked-down-after-leaving-orkney-hideaway-2923924

Good read about David Harvey 

 

[Clockwork]

https://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/international/scotland-and-leeds-great-david-harvey-tracked-down-after-leaving-orkney-hideaway-2923924 Good read about David Harvey 

 

 

Nice piece, a terrific keeper! Harvey undoubtedly ousted his predecessor Gary Sprake after a number of high profile howlers, the most famous perhaps being his mistake in the first game of the 1970 Cup final at Wembley against Chelsea. It somewhat spoiled his tenure and legacy as the No1 at Leeds in the end, which had seen him keep over 200 clean sheets in just over 500 games?

 

[WALMOT]

From the OS:-

Sponsorship represents the largest commercial deal in the club’s history

Leeds United and SBOTOP have entered into a multi-year partnership which will see the global sports betting brand become principal sponsor of the club.

The deal will see the SBOTOP logo feature on the front of our famous white shirt from the start of the 2020/21 season. 

The sponsorship represents the largest commercial deal in the club’s history. 

SBOTOP, part of the Celton Manx Group, are held in high regard across the Global betting industry.

Leeds United Executive Director Paul Bell said: “Today’s announcement with SBOTOP represents a landmark day for Leeds United’s commercial strategy as we attract new global brands to our official partners programme”

“We have been in discussions with Bill Mummery and his team at SBOTOP/Celton Manx for some time, looking at various ways to work together and I’ve been very impressed by their experience and the proactive way in which they have looked to engage with the club. 

“Now that we have returned to the Premier League, we are in a position to work with SBOTOP on a truly global platform as we both look to achieve our goals.”

Bill Mummary, Executive Director at Celton Manx/SBOTOP added: “We are thrilled to enter into a relationship with Leeds United, a club with rich heritage and an enormous fan base. 

“We have experience of working in the Premier League and this strategic partnership allows us to work closely with the club as they enter into this next phase of their history, back in the top flight. 

“These are exciting times for all concerned and we can’t wait to get started.”

The SBOTOP logo will feature on the front of our new Adidas kit, due to launch later this month, as well as appearing as a sponsor on the clubs official training wear.

 

[WALMOT]

Well what a way to kick off our return to the PL with a trip to Anfield to play the champions.

 

[thisal]

On 20/08/2020 at 16:31, WALMOT said:

Well what a way to kick off our return to the PL with a trip to Anfield to play the champions.

 

I take it you're a Liverpool supporter.

[Bedford White]

Spain's No 9 Rodrigo incoming. €29m with up to €12m add ons.  Seems like only yesterday that we had Luke Varney or Steve Morrison upfront 

[WALMOT]

Our new record signing speaks to LUTV

https://video.leedsunited.com/video?playlist=aHR0cHM6Ly9sZWVkc3VuaXRlZC1jbS5zdHJlYW1hbWcuY29tL2FwaS92MS9hZmY3NDdiYy0xYmNkLTQyZGYtOWQ2Yi01NDBhNTcyYzY4MTYvM2djNEpaaFpvVVpqaGNUWEs0TjlHWU5xOFJwd0JvbTdBczE5UDVGY2VLTFc3OUJ3cnYvZW4vZmVlZC8wMTc2OWY5MS02Y2NlLTRiMWYtYTc5MS01ODYzMzdkYWFkZDAvc2VjdGlvbnMvc2VhcmNoP3NlY3Rpb249OGU3NmI5ODctMDI3Yi00ZTU0LWI5NTYtNjNlYzZiNmI0MDBlJnBhZ2VTaXplPTg%3D&entry=0_lk9i79i5

 

[Bedford White]

We've now got big Koch at the back and big Rod in attack 

Edited August 29, 2020 by Bedford White

[Derry Alli]

Julian Draxler? 

[We Are Pars Fans!]

Draxler would be a class signing but can’t see it happening

[WALMOT]

MB's first pre match PL press conferance:-

Long wait - sum up emotions? Special to play Liverpool?

It’s a very special game. Full of different scenarios to last season.

 

Update on your contract situation

I will be working the next season at Leeds United.

 

Phillips with England - did he give you his shirt?

I was very happy he was able to make his debut so quickly with England.

 

New signings - what can you tell us? Happy with squad?

Two players who have the correct level to play in the PL. If there’s going to be any new signings we will let you know in due time.

 

What emotions will you feel going out as a PL manager?

The club, the fans, the players, they all deserve to be playing in the Premier League.

 

What threats do Liverpool pose?

A just champion with a consistent style of play. Without a doubt one of the best teams in the world.

 

Aims for this season?

It’s very difficult to predict results.

 

Team news - injuries?

All the players are available to play.

 

Forshaw?

Adam Forshaw is out. He’s a separate case.

 

Rodrigo and Koch up to fitness required?

They are in very good physical condition.

 

Details you still need to sort on your contract?

Everything has been sorted and it’s definite I will be here next season.

 

Changes to your coaching staff?

No, only Corberan.

 

The biggest test of your ability the PL?

It’s the best league in the world and it requires you to be at the highest level.

 

The biggest test of your ability the PL?

It’s the best league in the world and it requires you to be at the highest level.

 

Why Rodrigo? What do you like about him?

He’s a very known player, he has extensive track record. He’s also a starter for an important nation in Europe. That defines him as a player.

 

How to fill White gap?

The spot on the right of defence in the back four does not require adaptation.

 

What weaknesses do Liverpool have? Anything you feel you can exploit from your analysis?

I reiterate that they are one of the best teams in the world. They have a defined system with very good players.

 

Are Leeds' young players such as Davis, McCalmont, etc best served with loan moves away?

That’s not a decision that we’ve taken at the moment.

 

How difficult will it be to bridge the gap?

It’s difficult to assimilate how they are going to adjust to the PRemier LEague. We prepared for this, but we need to show it on the pitch.

 

Does it say a lot about your confidence in the players you are keeping them?

They have been forming a group for some time and they have maintained the players they feel can play at a higher level.

 

Change your tactics for PL?

To begin with we will try to play the same way.

 

Klopp - manager you look up to?

With the work Klopp has done everywhere, that has given him the chance to shine everywhere. Anything I added would be repeating the praise he has already rightly received.

 

Heavy metal football they play - are you a fan?

I have not got much culture in music so I wouldn’t know.

 

Pleased to change people's perceptions of Leeds?

I didn’t know what people thought of Leeds prior and I don’t know now.

 

Premier League

I am very happy to compete in a league of such stature.

 

Short period between seasons helpful?

It’s very difficult to predict what’s going to happen when there is a change in league and change in quality.

 

How important the players stick to the way they play when the going gets tough?

One of the difficulties we will face this season and we have to show we can continue to play the way we want.

 

What is success this season?

I don’t like to predict so far into the future.

 

Ever any doubts he would not sign that new contract?

Like in every negotiation, nothing is done until it’s done.

 

Any time for holidays?

I haven’t had any free time for a holiday.

 

What does Anfield mean to you?

We are going to play at Anfield, but it is only Anfield if it is full.

 

How much progress has been made these past two seasons?

I don’t share the opinion I have changed the structure of the team. When I arrived they had the necessary structure to work at a high level. This is in reference to logistics, the academy, health and institution. Maintenance of the institution. All the areas at the club were running how they should.

 

Where is last year's title ranked in his achievements?

It’s very difficult to evaluate as I haven’t won loads and when I did it was a long time ago.

 

Why has it taken so long to sort the contract?

There is nothing of importance. I have worked at 100 per cent since the celebrations finished.

 

Nervous before first game of the season?

I always get nervous prior to playing. I worry when I am not scared or nervous.

 

[WALMOT]

Leeds United are delighted to announce the signing of defender Diego Llorente.

The 27-year-old joins the club from La Liga outfit Real Sociedad for an undisclosed fee.

The defender has put pen to paper on a four-year deal at Elland Road, running until the summer of 2024.

Llorente started his career at Real Madrid, making his Bernabeu debut against Osasuna in June 2013.

He spent the 2015/16 campaign at Rayo Vallecano and at the end of the season was rewarded with his first Spain cap in the 3-1 win over Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The following campaign he joined Malaga on loan, continuing to build up his La Liga experience with 25 appearances in Spain’s top-flight.

This led to Real Sociedad moving to secure his signature on a permanent basis from Real Madrid in June 2017, where he signed a five-year deal at the Reale Arena.

At Sociedad Llorente made 88 appearances over the last three seasons, scoring eight goals for the club, with his last outing coming 11 days ago, in their 1-1 draw with Valladolid.

To date Llorente has won five international caps for Spain, with his last coming in the 2-1 victory over Romania in May 2019, whilst he was on the bench for their last two matches in September against Germany and Ukraine.

Llorente will wear the number 14 shirt during his time at Leeds United.

[WALMOT]

From the New York Times:-

Results, Respect and Marcelo Bielsa

A point against Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City felt like a victory for Leeds. But for Bielsa and his many admirers, the journey always says more than the scoreboard.

By Rory Smith

Oct. 4, 2020

LEEDS, England — The spot where they filmed the scene in “The Damned United” is a wasteland now, and it has been for some time: a patch of land in the lee of Elland Road, long earmarked for some development or other. Before it was sealed off behind security fencing, a couple of excavators standing as idle sentries, it was a parking lot, and before that, it was Leeds United’s training center.

And it was there that, at the start of his vengeful, paranoid, ill-fated spell as manager of Leeds United, Brian Clough — or, rather, Michael Sheen, as Clough — gathered together the squad of garlanded internationals that had long been his enemies but were now, effectively, his employees, and delivered his speech.

“As far as I am concerned, the first thing you can do for me is to chuck all your medals and all your caps and all your pots and all your pans into the biggest flipping dustbin you can find,” Clough said, as imagined by David Peace, the author of the book on which the film is based. “Because you’ve never won any of them fairly.”
Rory Smith On Soccer: One of the world’s best commentators analyzes tactics, matches and personalities.

That speech — in which, in Peace’s telling, Clough assailed his new team’s famously liberal attitude to violence in pursuit of victory, a brutality that had earned it the nickname Dirty Leeds — is, in the film, interpreted as the start of the decline. Forty-four days later, Clough had left the club.

In 1974, it was a scandal and a sensation and a source of bitter recrimination. With the passage of time, some of the enmity has been blunted, part of the story softened, and it has slowly been folded into the myth and the lore not only of Clough but of Leeds, too.

But while that may well have been the moment that condemned Clough to fail at Leeds — and condemned Leeds to losing the man who still, 16 years after his death, embodies English soccer’s cult of the manager — somewhere beneath the vitriol and the provocation, Clough’s message contained a kernel of a broader truth.

Sport, as he said, is not just about what you win. It is about how you play, too. This is not a belief that is, traditionally, given much oxygen in the modern sports-industrial complex. Results are king. Stasis is failure, and failure is intolerable. Everything else, as José Mourinho never fails to tell us, is sophistry.

How then to explain the esteem — bordering on idolization — held by so many of his peers for Marcelo Bielsa, a coach who quite freely acknowledges that listing his honors would not take long, who until a few weeks ago had not won a single club trophy since 1998?

It was, after all, Bielsa whom Pep Guardiola made a pilgrimage to meet before embarking on his own coaching career. It was Bielsa with whom he stayed up for 12 hours, talking soccer, over the embers of an asado deep in the Argentine countryside. It was Bielsa whom, Guardiola told a friend, “knew the most about football.”
ImageA second-half goal by Rodrigo Moreno, center, gave Leeds a 1-1 draw with City in the rain.
A second-half goal by Rodrigo Moreno, center, gave Leeds a 1-1 draw with City in the rain.Credit...Pool photo by Cath Ivill

Guardiola is an aesthete, of course, but he is no less ruthless or ambitious or hungry for success than Mourinho. He just happens to believe that attractive, front-foot soccer is the best way to win. He has, over the years, accumulated considerable supporting evidence: two Champions Leagues, a glut of league titles and domestic cups, an almost endless screed of records.

And yet it is Bielsa whom he finds “inspirational,” who ranks as “the person I admire the most in football.” “He is unique,” Guardiola said, a couple of days before taking his Manchester City team to Elland Road on Saturday. “He is the most authentic manager in terms of how he conducts his teams.”

It is worth lingering on that word: authentic. Bielsa’s reputation as a dogmatist has created a misleading impression of him. He is often presented as a purist, a theorist, a coach who cherishes his ideas more than mere material possessions, a leader for whom success is a secondary consideration behind beauty.

As detailed in the Bielsa biography “The Quality of Madness,” though, Bielsa’s desire to win is such that he once told the young defender Fernando Gamboa that he “had not understood a damn thing of what this is about” because he hesitated when asked if he would cut off a finger to assure victory in a derby.

Bielsa does not want to win any less than Mourinho. It is just that he believes, like Guardiola, that adventure provides a more reliable route to that success than caution. And it is just that he knows, like Clough, that how you play matters as much as what you win.

There was a telling moment, not long after the final whistle at Elland Road on Saturday night. Leeds and Manchester City had battled to a 1-1 draw. It had been precisely the sort of game that had been anticipated: breathless and absorbing and electric, full of all those flourishes, ideas and experiments that English soccer once would have seen as heresy, a sort of alien entryism, but which are now — thanks in no small part to Guardiola and Bielsa — considered cutting-edge.

City played high, with a four-man front line. Leeds learned to circumvent the City press. Rodrigo Moreno came on and dropped too deep, confounding City’s marking. City flicked to three at the back; Leeds transformed again, closing the creaking fissures. At one point, both teams had fullbacks playing in midfield.
Image

Guardiola brought on Fernandinho, a defensive player, and made City more attacking. Bielsa, internally, applauded the move. “It was a very smart change,” Bielsa said. “It had a significant impact.” At times, as two great minds whirled and danced and flickered and fought, it felt a little like watching Jack Donaghy in “30 Rock” negotiate with himself.

At the end of it all, Bielsa paused in thought for a moment before greeting Guardiola. They exchanged a few words, a smile, a pat on the arm. Behind the City coach, a line was forming.

First, Lorenzo Buenaventura, City’s conditioning coach, was waiting; he had worked with Bielsa at the 2002 World Cup. They embraced. Aymeric Laporte, City’s French defender, had been loitering a few steps away but now he, too, beamed with delight as he greeted Bielsa, the coach who had given him his debut at Athletic Bilbao.

Then, from the bench, Benjamin Mendy tapped Bielsa on the shoulder; they had worked together at Marseille. Mendy’s prolific social media use offers an insight into just how much affection remains.

Marcelo
— Benjamin Mendy (@benmendy23) September 12, 2020

Not one of them had won anything by Bielsa’s side. Argentina crashed out at the group stage in 2002. Athletic reached two cup finals, and lost them both. Marseille seemed to be storming to a French title, only to finish fourth. And yet that did not seem to have tainted anyone’s memories of Bielsa. He had given them something just as valuable as medals: memories.

Perhaps that is what Guardiola meant by authentic. Not once, even as he has failed to meet his own demands, to slake his own thirst, has Bielsa deviated from his path. His ideas remain unspoiled, unadulterated, whole. Because sport is not just about what you win. It is also about how you play.

[WALMOT]

Sad news about Peter Lorimer:-

Leeds United have confirmed the sad news that Peter Lorimer is battling a long-term illness in a hospice.

Lorimer was a key part of the club's golden age under Don Revie, winning two league titles, an FA Cup and a League Cup and remains Leeds United's all-time leading goalscorer, netting 238 times across two Elland Road spells.

The 74-year-old has battled through a number of health issues in recent years and the club have now issued a statement confirming the sad news that he is now in hospice.

"Sadly we can confirm that Peter Lorimer is currently in a hospice battling a long term illness," the club statement reads.

"Peter, his wife Sue and their family would like some privacy at this time, but also want to thank the Leeds United fans across the world for their wonderful messages of support.

"The club will update fans on Peter’s progress in due course."

Lorimer made his Leeds debut at the age of 15 years and 289 days in September 1962 and within a couple of years was a regular in Revie's team.

His powerul strike earned him the name 'Hot Shot' and during his two spells at Leeds he would turn out 705 times for the club, while also winning 21 Scotland caps.

[paul wright scores]

2 hours ago, WALMOT said:

Sad news about Peter Lorimer:-

Leeds United have confirmed the sad news that Peter Lorimer is battling a long-term illness in a hospice.

Lorimer was a key part of the club's golden age under Don Revie, winning two league titles, an FA Cup and a League Cup and remains Leeds United's all-time leading goalscorer, netting 238 times across two Elland Road spells.

The 74-year-old has battled through a number of health issues in recent years and the club have now issued a statement confirming the sad news that he is now in hospice.

"Sadly we can confirm that Peter Lorimer is currently in a hospice battling a long term illness," the club statement reads.

"Peter, his wife Sue and their family would like some privacy at this time, but also want to thank the Leeds United fans across the world for their wonderful messages of support.

"The club will update fans on Peter’s progress in due course."

Lorimer made his Leeds debut at the age of 15 years and 289 days in September 1962 and within a couple of years was a regular in Revie's team.

His powerul strike earned him the name 'Hot Shot' and during his two spells at Leeds he would turn out 705 times for the club, while also winning 21 Scotland caps.

Great player.  Still remember him scoring in the 1974 World Cup against Zaire

[stanton]

 

[WALMOT]

As well as the sad news about Peter Lorimer its also been disclosed that Mick Bates is also seriously ill with cancer.

[WALMOT]

Sheffield United game is being shown on Amazon Prime on the 3rd April with a 3pm kick off.

The Man City game is now a 12.30pm kick off on Saturday the 10th on BT sports.

[Bedford White]

RIP Lash. Some team we will have up there.