Were Leeds right to sack Simon Grayson?

Championship club Leeds United have dispensed with the services of manager Simon Grayson after a 4-1 home defeat to promotion rivals Birmingham City.

It seems like a harsh decision considering that Leeds are just four points off the play-off positions in 10th place in the league.

Promising

Simon Grayson is a promising young boss and is Leeds through and through. Apparently he supported the club as a boy and also represented them as a player. I’m sure he is hurting at this moment in time. He did the best job he could under difficult circumstances at the club.

I’m sure Grayson will probably go on to on to be a success elsewhere and probably be a boss in the Premier League at some point in the future.

Sold

Simon Grayson’s problem as Leeds boss was that the club were continuously selling their best players and not reinvesting the funds back into the club. In the last year the likes of Max Gradel, Kasper Schmeichel and Jonny Howson have all left the club.

These were all key players for the Whites and it just shows that you can’t achieve promotion by selling your best players. The quality of the Leeds squad is definitely worse than 12 months ago, when the club was challenging for the Championship play-offs.

Chairman

Leeds chairman Ken Bates seems to be refusing to take the blame for the recent slump in fortunes. He Yorkshire Radio: “ We have to acknowledge the previous three seasons Simon got us to the League One play-offs then promotion and then we finished seventh (in the Championship) and we have backed him all the way,”

“At 30 players, we have one of the largest squads in the Championship and bigger than some in the Premier League. We spent over £12million on wages so why are people blaming me for the recent results”

I’ll tell you why you’re getting the blame Mr Bates, it’s because Leeds fans believe that you haven’t been reinvesting the money made from transfers as you claim and that you are lining your own pockets with the proceeds of player sales.

In the process you have weakened the team and therefore you must hold a huge slice of the blame for your clubs recent results. Leeds may have a squad of 30 players but I’m sure Simon Grayson would have happily moved players on if he could have kept his best players.

Simon Grayson had a good point about working under financial constraints at the club. He lost the likes of Kasper Schmeichel and Max Gradel for relatively low fees compared to their worth to the team. Bates was probably just happy to pocket the cash.

I’m not saying that all the blame should be laid at Ken Bates door but he has to take responsibility for some of the clubs recent on-field problems.

Next

Leeds are now on the hunt for their next manager and the current favourite is former-QPR boss Neil Warnock. The veteran boss was sacked by the Premier League club earlier this month after his club suffered a terrible run of results.

However Warnock is a specialist at getting clubs promoted. His most recent successes were getting Sheffield United and more recently QPR into the top flight. That’s where Leeds want to be and I don’t think he would be a bad choice to replace Grayson.

Unlucky

Overall Simon Grayson has been unlucky to lose his job and I think that a lot of Leeds fans would agree with me. They seem to be growing restless at the way that Ken Bates is running the club. Unfortunately for them I don’t think Ken Bates has any plans to leave the club in the near future.

Where Leeds right to sack Simon Grayson?