PROMOTION - NOT SELFPROMOTION

[Promotion 2010]

Hvordan kan et lag klappe sammen til de grader som LUFC. Nok en blogg med en fin vinkling av hva som kreves høyt der oppe i TREDJE DIVISJON!!!

Teenage Kicks In: All roads Leeds to excuses.



Nice idea.
In this weeks article our young writer Darragh is having no truck with excuses.

Pressure is a tough thing to cope with, I don’t know one person who can tell me otherwise. Be it sitting an exam, taking part in a national debate or simply playing football with thousands of fans expectations on your shoulders, every situation has its pressures. The whole thing about life though is you are meant to deal with the pressure and get by regardless. A person who is unable to deal with pressure of any sort in the workplace will not be employed for long because it is simply expected of them to deal with it. Likewise at school, with my exams getting ever closer if I “didn’t show up on the day” I would get the scolding I deserve and questions would be asked about my ability to do any work whatsoever. I’m not sure why then all of this is thrown out the window when it comes to football, and even more specifically league 1 this season.

Perhaps it is the sign of a mentally weak side or perhaps we just have too high expectations of league 1 teams but there has been an astounding amount of bottling this season in the race for automatic promotion. First of all Charlton led the way by performing poorly after their bright start to the season. We were to follow all too soon hitting a spiral that we are still quite dizzy from with 3 games left. Since then Millwall obviously didn’t like the limelight of 2nd spot and felt that a cheap draw with Yeovil would set things right. Swindon are the ‘Bruce Forsyth’s Haven’t They Done Well team of the year’ this season but even they seem to be suffering with altitude sickness if 2nd place comes on offer. Colchester and Bristol Rovers then are others who were out of the blocks quickly but dropped back as the race progresses. Southampton and Norwich seem to be the only teams immune to this but they too seemed to succumb to the pressure of possible favourites for promotion and they started poorly. Ultimately what all of this means though is that none of the top 9 teams in this league have prevailed in the face of pressure of any sort. For me what makes it worse is that 4 of these teams are actually considered biggish clubs who’s fans expect them to succeed in this tin-pot league.

What it all comes down to though is that once a team is as low as the 3rd tier of English football, the calibre of players do not have the mental strength to keep a season going when they clearly have the squad to do so. It’s just about dealing with the pressure of expected to do well and there’s nothing that can be done but get promoted and buy a better calibre of players. As the DirtyLeeds blog put it during the week, Leeds United are too big for League 1 Players.

The thing that gets me about all of these things though is that fans just accept it as a part of football. I’m sure many experienced Leeds fans might tell me that Leeds always bottle it around Christmas time or something similar but nobody will be able to tell me why everybody just accepts it. I’m only guessing really but I’d say the average starting player for Leeds earns around ￡8,000 a week to play football. For the majority of people reading this, to play football for such a considerable amount of money is their dream job! Surely then for players this entails that if you are being paid such a high amount of money you need to actually deal with any pressure that comes with the job. One of the reasons footballers are paid so much is that they are expected to deal with the pressure of thousands of fans with their individual expectations of the team and players individual performances. Players are simply not allowed to consistently have ‘off days’ if they are playing professionally. Too much is riding on their performances both financially and emotionally for supporters for them not to show up. In Leeds United’s case fans have had many examples of the fans arriving at an away trip only for the team to arrive 33 minutes later after the match began to find themselves 3-0 down. Then after a fan pays good money to see this and decides it warrants the odd boo, they are treated as traitors to the team by the same people who were in Dublin and Lorimers Bar licking Bates’ arse and the same people who blindly love Beckford even though he has given nothing in the way of dividends the past couple of months. Fans are dealing in any way they can after paying hard earned money just to see a team of over-payed tossers who refuse to pass the ball along the ground and if that means booing then let them boo.

There is nothing worse than a gathering of people who refuse to criticise the attitude of the team somewhat like George Orwell’s 1984. Somebody needs to let them know how the masses feel and if that means booing then let them be. I imagine I am slightly less aggravated than the average Leeds fan as I only spending money once a season travelling across the Irish Sea but I can still clearly see how the majority of fans are seeing. The fact that the Grayson players don’t seem to notice this or at least don’t acknowledge it. When a fan base as big as ours has such high expectations of a club while they play in League 1 then we can never ever accept such poor performances that seem all to familiar in a season of ups and downs. With all due respect to Gillingham and other small clubs, we cannot drop points in those sort of games if we are a team with any ambitions.
I suppose this is allot of pressure to put on a league 1 side but as Scottish a friend of mine often says, we are Leeds United not Leyton Orient. When the opportunity is there to get promoted you need to grab it with both hands and see games through. Lucky for us, there are many other teams in this league who have had the same problem which leads me to think that its just a question of the standard of player as opposed to us just being poor. I can understand an individual player under performing but if the majority of players on the pitch cannot deal with the pressure of a promotion race then there is an outright problem and the manager plays a huge part in this. A couple of months back while things were still good I brought up possible flaws that Grayson has and this one seems to be pushed forward more and more. Every team has various upsets in a season but the manager is supposed to try and motivate the players so that they can bounce back from it. A 3 month slump is unthinkable for a team attempting to win the league and allot of this comes down to Grayson and his coaching staff. With 3 games left we have already bottled it but luckily so have our other promotion rivals. Now its simply about trying to recoup and just get by and pray that next season will be a little easier on the nerves because at this rate I’m not even going to live to see my mid-life crisis.

Darragh Mullen.

[berlin]

Interessant artikkel eller rettere sagt ytring fra en svoren irsk Leeds-fan! Takk Promo!  

Det kan absolutt synes som at klubben er for stor for den type spillere vi har, d.v.s de takler ikke presset som fører med å spille for denne klubben. Nå står det jo mer der, men dette er "god mat" for bl.a. jarle og DHY, som har ment at vi må bringe inn klassespillere, nesten koste hva det koste vil.

Er vel i samme situasjon som denne Darragh Mullen, ber til høyere makter om at vi rykker opp,
og deretter be om at ambisjonene høynes!

Og så håper jeg ikke dette blir nok en Bates-tråd. (Gud, jeg skal være glad når han er forsvunnet, uansett om de nye eierne er stinnrike eller ei)

[McMidjo]

Mye bra i disse bloggene synes jeg.

Om det er slik at laget vårt knekker fullstendig sammen ved første tegn til motgang, har vi i hvert fall ikke noe i en høyere divisjon å gjøre………

[Promotion 2010]

Mye bra i disse bloggene synes jeg.

Om det er slik at laget vårt knekker fullstendig sammen ved første tegn til motgang, har vi i hvert fall ikke noe i en høyere divisjon å gjøre………

Vi har ALT å gjøre i en høyere divisjon! Det kan føre til litt mer anstendighet i West Yorkshire.