Ken Bates has given Gary McAllister the dreaded vote of confidence, and promised that his manager will have cash to spend in when the transfer window opens in January.

McAllister flew to Monaco to discuss the club’s strategy for the coming months with the chairman, accompanied by chief executive Shaun Harvey and technical director Gwyn Williams. Although Mc.Allister has come in for quite a lot of criticism from Leeds fans after our recent slump in form, Bates insisted that the meeting had been in the diary for some time, and wasn’t a panic reaction to the defeat by Histon.

The Chairman told the Yorkshire Post "We analysed all parts of the club, all parts of the performance, the Academy, and every player on the books was discussed in depth. There's certainly no panic. It was a very positive meeting. Gary made it quite clear he couldn't convert to kick-and rush [at Histon] as some have suggested. He sees his job as bringing back the type of football the fans enjoy and that's what we are aiming for”.

Bates acknowledged that the Histon result was 'disappointing' but said: "The fact of the matter is that we were knocked out, and that's the end of it. The pitch was dreadful – I suspect if it hadn't have been live on TV it would have been cancelled – but they adapted to the conditions better than we did and good luck to them in the next round”.

Although most Leeds fans think the defence is the area of the squad that is most in need of improvement, Bates said they had "discussed every single member of the playing squad” and he suggested that one or two members of the squad had been "coasting" through the season so far. (Which ties in with the rumour I’ve heard about one squad member- mentioning no names .  A gentleman who hasn’t made the first team for some time and has allegedly been hitting the bottle fairly regularly in recent months).

Bates continued "I'm not going to be specific about our plans, but we're clear on what we want and the new players we sign have to be coming here in the first week of January, not the last. The transfer window's only a month away so we've got work to do in a short space of time, but Gary will be able to strengthen his squad." Leeds recently announced profits in excess of £4.5m for the 14 months leading up to July 2008, and it seems that at least some of this cash will be made available to McAllister to strengthen the squad.

So Mc.Allister’s job is secure for the time being, but will he still be there at the end of the season if he doesn’t deliver promotion? He already has one of the strongest squads in League One (arguably the strongest) and he needs to get the best out of them, and prove that he’s a good manager as well as a good coach, starting with Tranmere on Saturday.

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