Neil Warnock may well have been right when he said that appointing Mark Hughes would destroy the club, but of the many names being banded about, who is the best choice to take us forward?
During his extraordinary outburst this morning, Colin said "I laugh when I see some of these names. A) We can't afford the compensation and b) do you think Mark Hughes would want Leeds United at the moment?”. Hopefully Useless wouldn’t want to come to our club after all the abuse he’s received every time he’s come to Elland Road as a player, and you could also ask why we would want him as a manager in the first place.
He made a good start to his managerial career when he almost took Wales to the finals of the 2004 European Championship, but his record in club football ever since has been less than impressive. At Man City he was seen on the training ground so infrequently that he got the nickname ‘Howard Hughes’, and then we have the debacle of his time in charge of QPR. So it’s quite worrying that some reports are saying he’s been ‘linked’ to the Leeds job.
My choice would be our former assistant boss Gus Poyet, who is doing an excellent job at Brighton, while getting them to play some decent football. While he was at Elland Road it was rumoured that he was the brains of the outfit while Wise just shouted at everyone, and this seems highly plausible given the way we dropped down the table after he had gone. But the Yorkshire Post are reporting that a clause in his contract means it would take £2.5 million compensation to take him from Brighton, which rules him out, given the limited resources of current owners GFH.
Meanwhile Talk Sport are claiming an ‘Exclusive,’ as apparently Steve Morison believes Michael Appleton is the man for the job. Dear god, no! In his brief spell at Blackburn he managed to get a talent squad to play dreadfully dull and unsuccessful football, and in the recent 0-0 draw at Ewood Park they were the most negative home side I’d seen for a very long time. And after Paul Ince picked up the pieces of his other brief spell at Blackpool he claimed to have inherited a squad that was completely ‘directionless’.
So maybe we’re left with Brian McDermott as the best of the realistic options. When his name was first mentioned I thought he might be a bit dull, but considering some of the alternatives he seems to be quite a good choice after all. He told BBC Radio Berkshire "What you are going to have with me is someone who is even more hungry. “If I do get a Championship club they will be getting a very, very hungry manager”.
So maybe we should keep him on a starvation diet before he changes his mind. But he did go on to say "I have to make sure I will join my next club on my terms”, which indicates he might be put off by Warnock’s comments about what is going on behind the scenes at Elland Road. Perhaps we’ll end up with a manager who is just desperate for any job, and live to regret it.
While the search for a new boss goes on, we have Neil Redfearn back in temporary charge, which is a worry in itself. He may be a decent coach, but in his previous temporary spell his only win was against a Bristol City side, who had been reduced to nine men. I’m not counting his last game against Doncaster when we were losing at half time, before newly-appointed Warnock went into the dressing room at half time to change things round. He lost his other games, which is a worry when we may still need a couple of points to guarantee survival in the Championship.
One bit of good news is that Richard Naylor is going to assist him, with Leigh Bromby to take over as u18s coach for the rest of the season. Given Naylor’s impressive start to his coaching career, he may be the man who will give us a bit of direction, as well as putting a rocket up one or two backsides. And he’s a Leeds man through and through, so dare we hope we might seem as the Leeds boss in the not too distant future?