Yesterday it was reported that Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink was interested in leaving Burton Albion to come to Leeds, but today Massimo Cellino has denied that the Dutchman will be on his way to Elland Road.

Yesterday the Yorkshire Evening Post claimed that Leeds had ‘shown an interest’ in the possibility of bringing JFH to Leeds, and they quoted his agent as saying “Of course, it would interest him. Jimmy now has experience as a manager and would like to continue with that. Jimmy is keeping his options open. Any that come up and would interest him, for sure, he would be in touch.”

Hasselbaink took charge of Burton in November and continued the good work of his predecessor Gary Rowett, successfully guiding the Brewers to promotion. You might think he’d be mad to leave an existing job to work for Cellino, and that he would want to have more control over player recruitment than the Italian would allow.

But JFH said that he wasn’t worried about Cellino’s fearsome reputation for hiring and firing managers, saying that if he was successful in the role of head coach he would have nothing to worry about. But all of this could be academic, as today Il Presidente has dismissed this speculation, saying it’s “just more talk.”

Cellino isn’t supposed to have any knowledge of what is going on at Elland Road, but by next week his suspension will have finished and he will be back in charge, at least until his next tax case has finished going through the Italian courts. And the first decision he will have to make will be who will be the head coach at the start of next season.

Neil Redfearn’s contract ends after Saturday’s game, and so far there has been no move by the club to ask him to extend it. That might just be because Cellino wasn’t around to approve a new deal, but it’s been pretty clear that someone at the club has been working to undermine Redfearn in recent weeks, and we’ll soon know if Cellino had anything to do with it.

But last week Redfearn admitted that he had “no god-given right” to be in charge and said that the club was “more important than me”, and that he was going to have a “sit down and think” about his future at the club. We would hope that even if he doesn’t remain as head coach he would at least go back to his job at the academy, though it’s possible that his relationship with the owner has soured to the point when he won’t even do that.

Redfearn is a Leeds man through and through and many fans will be angry if he goes, so Cellino might think he’ll need to placate us by signing a former hero. We have fond memories of the 42 goals JFH scored for us in happier times, though he did then engineer a move to Althetico Madrid before playing for one of our most hated rivals on his return to English football.

Despite the denials of an approach for Hasselbaink I wouldn’t be surprised if he is in charge of Leeds at the start of next season, and he’s probably as good a coach as we could attract in the circumstances. But if Redfearn is forced out it will be a shabby way to treat a thoroughly honourable man.

Photo: Action Images

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