Poor Brian McDermott seems to be getting it in the neck from all sides at the moment. Not only is he getting abusive phone calls from the fans, but he’s not getting much support from above either.

Today the Yorkshire Post published details of a bizzare letter which the manager received in mid-January from GFH chief executive Hisham Alrayes after our disappointing run of results over the Christmas and new year period.

The letter asked for a report explaining the club’s form and “technical shortfalls” and a written analysis outlining “technical assessment, performance of players and forward planning for discussion with the board” after each of our fixtures.

And strangely they also demanded that McDermott allow Alrayes and Leeds chairman Salah Nooruddin to approve his “strategy, list of players and squad formation” for every game, at least 24 hours before kick-off. God knows how they thought they could come up with a better team selection while sitting in an office in Bahrain.

After the 6-0 at Sheffield Wednesday on January 11 Alrayes complained that Leeds had been “humiliated live on television against a local rival” and talked of the “dissatisfaction” felt by GFH and United’s board “on the way the team has been managed and the surprising results in the past seven games”. The Post claims that Alrayes wanted to sack McDermott but David Haigh disagreed.

The next letter from Alves told McDermott “whilst we continue to support you further if positives results and performance of the team is turnaround (sic), we expect you to take the points raised in this memo seriously.” All of this backs up Massimo Cellino’s claim that GFH wanted to sack McDermott in January but didn’t have the balls to do it.

More recently, some senior people within GFH have taken exception to McDermott’s comments to the media about their handling of the club, and have tried to sop his regular press conferences. But this has been ignored by David Haigh, who has allowed the manager to continue to speak to the media.

Not only do these strange demands on the manager smack of desperation on the part of GFH, but it’s becoming clear that GFH are divided among themselves and that David Haigh is the only friend that McDermott has got among the GFH hierarchy. It’s no wonder we’re in a mess.

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