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Does the Stairway to Evans mean a Highway to Hell?
Monday, 19th Oct 2015 16:56 by Tim Whelan

Massimo Cellino’s desire to see ‘Heavy Metal football’ at Elland road has led him to appoint Steve Evans, one of the most reviled men in English football. My e-mail inbox and Facebook account are full of mocking comments from fans of other clubs today, but apart from his obnoxious behaviour, can Steve Evans actually do the job?

The news of Rosler’s sacking comes as no surprise, although I would have given him a little more time to sort things out. In general Saturday’s performance was a big improvement on some of the previous home games, but he hammered the final nail into his own coffin with the needless substitution of Botaka in the 78th minute, leaving us down to 10 men when Cooper couldn’t continue.

That said, the speed of Evans’ appointment today suggest that Cellino will have been in contact with the fat man before the weekend to sound him out as a possible replacement. Il Presidente explained his choice to the Daily Mirror "I used to hate him because he is a fighter. I didn't like playing against him because he gives his teams his personality. He's a tough coach and I want that character in our team. He manages with passion and our team has not been playing with passion.”

Well, you could say he’s got “character” and “personality”… It would be more accurate to say that his abrasive character has made him one of the most reviled characters in the game, and many fans of other clubs will feel that appointing him makes it look as if we’re just begging for hatred. By far the most serious of his crimes against football was his involvement in a tax evasion scam, which does at least give him something in common with our beloved owner.

During Evans’ time at Boston the club withheld a total of £323,000 in taxes over a period of five years, by illegally classifying players’ wages as expenses, which wouldn’t be taxable. After they had been rumbled he was suspended from all involvement in football for 20 months in January 2003 for his part in the scam and for attempting to impede the subsequent FA inquiry.

And that wasn’t the last of his troubles, as he received a one-year suspended jail sentence in November 2006 once the Inland Revenue had brought a criminal prosecution as a result of the affair. Many people thought that he was very lucky not to go to prison. And apart from that episode, he has had quite a long list of punishments from the FA for abusing match officials from the touchline whenever decisions don’t go his way.

But now that I’ve had a couple of hours to get over the shock of his appointment, I’ve started to ponder the question of whether he is likely to produce the goods on the field. He began in non-league football, guiding Stamford to promotion from the United Counties League, before moving onto relatively bigger things and taking both Boston and Crawley into the Football League. He then took Rotherham to two promotions and to safety in the Championship at the end of last season.

On the face of it that’s a pretty good record, although at both Boston and Crawley he was blessed with resources not available to his rival managers in the Conference. At Boston he could benefit from the tax evasion scheme mentioned above, and at Crawley substantial funds were being pumped into the club from a source that has never been publicly revealed, as well as the £1m windfall they got after being drawn against Man U in the FA Cup.

At least he has been complementary about Leeds in the past “You look at the clubs who have just come down from the Premier League, but they are not Leeds United. As a lad growing up I became aware of the likes of Billy Bremner and Peter Lorimer, and you never forget that. It is about football coming in cycles and when you are a massive club like Leeds, they will have their great days again.”And that’s not the usual stuff new managers come out with after taking over at Elland Road, as Evans made those comments last season.

On the subject of Cellino he told the Yorkshire Post “If you work for Massimo Cellino, you coach the players and get the results from the players he brings in or you pay with your job, that is the way it is. It is the foreign way of doing things and it does not make it right or wrong. If you look at Leeds United and Massimo Cellino, where would they be if he had not have stepped in with his millions of pounds?”

“He has had to put millions of investment into that football club and they do it in that way. I have nothing but respect for the guy. If you put the money he has put into a football club, if that is your model, you are entitled to do it.” But will Evans still have the same respect for Cellino in a few months time? It could work out, but we’ll have two massive egos going head to head, and we all know what will happen if the results won’t improve to Cellino’s liking.

Like most Leeds fans I’m appalled that Evans has been appointed, but now he’s in the job we’ll just have to hope that he makes a good job of it. Life will not be dull with him in charge, but I’m guessing we can look forward to a more primitive style of football. He should be able to guide Leeds away from the bottom third of this division, but I can’t see Evans being the man to take us back to the “great days” that our fans have the right to expect.

Photo: Action Images



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