After today’s shambolic press conference we are still no nearer to finding out if Massimo Cellino is intending to replace Neil Redfearn as the club’s head coach.

Redfearn’s current contract finishes in just over two weeks, yet Il Presidente still says he is taking his time over making the decision. "Is Neil the best coach for the club next season? I am asking myself this every day. I put Redfearn in as head coach and I wanted him to be successful more than anybody else. I have to find the right coach for this club.”

He also said “We have an option for Neil to be here next season", yet later appeared to contradict himself by saying "I cannot wait much longer because we are already late." Did he mean he was late in appointing a new coach? Cellino seemed intent on undermining Redfearn when he referred to the five match losing run after Steve Thompson’s unexplained departure.

"Maybe Thompson was more important than people think. I know why we lost those games. When someone thinks just for themselves they lose the point." I suppose you could infer that the losing run suggests that Thompson was the brains of the outfit all along, but it’s more likely that the losing run was down to the disruption caused by Thompson’s suspension.

And if Thompson was that important, shouldn’t Cellino be trying to persuade him to come back? He said nothing about that, only that he wasn’t responsible for the departure of the assistant head coach. "I spoke to Steve and said 'it's hard to believe that I don't know what's happened but I don't. I'm sorry. I was disqualified. What happened was very, very surprising. I like Thompson as a man."

So we wait to see if Neil Redfearn will still be in charge next season, yet the name Nigel Adkins keeps cropping up as a possible replacement. Another name in the frame is Brentford boss Mark Warburton, who would certainly be a good choice, but only if he was left to manage in the way he saw fit. Unfortunately, Cellino is still insisting that he will be the one in charge of player recruitment next season.

He certainly admitted to his own shortcomings in this area. “We had £10m from McCormack but spent £9.5m on other players. I just realised last night…The McCormack money went all on the garbage. We spent money on some players we didn't use." That’s the problem with the current set-up, the owners signs players the head coach doesn’t rate, while he wants to use the talent we have coming through from the academy.

Another worrying comment was that he is intending to cut back on the money invested in the academy. “We pay £1.2m a year just to pay academy players wages. No way…why should we pay them when they are kids.” This is despite the contribution of the four academy products we currently have in the first team, not to mention the transfer fees received for previous youth players over the last decade, to pay for the incompetence of former owners.

One bit of good news was that Adam Pearson “can’t confirm” is Nicola Salerno is still employed as sporting director (after the chaos Salerno caused with the Thompson fiasco, then hopefully not) but Cellino said that he will still be around himself for a while yet. Despite the two new tax evasion cases he is facing in Italy he denied suggestions that he is currently planning to sell the club.

"People say to me that this is a sleeping giant. I think it is awake but it not fit yet. Once it is fit it can go back to where it belongs." But he did promise "If in two seasons' time I'm not ready to take the club to the Premier League, I'm going to sell it.” And if we’re still in a mess after all that time there will be plenty of Leeds fans who will be glad to see him gone.

Photo: Action Images

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