Leeds United CEO's traditional input missing as errors and relegation peril render words futile

Angus Kinnear's matchday programme notes were conspicuous by their absence as Leeds United hosted Manchester City.
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It wasn't the first time this season that the club's official publication had gone without the CEO's input - there have been occasions when a tight turnaround between games and print deadlines has curbed his routine delve into the thesaurus to back the team or take potshots at the big six, the government, VAR or the fan-led review.

On other occasions there has been a definite sense of keeping schtum and adopting a lower profile.

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When Spurs visited, on what turned out to be Marcelo Bielsa's last afternoon in charge of the Whites, with Jesse Marsch waiting in the wings, Kinnear's notes went missing. What could he have said, after all, in the knowledge that change was in the wind?

On Saturday, when City visited Elland Road, with the tension rising and the Premier League table starting to look increasingly concerning, perhaps it was another of those times when there were no words that could be offered and the football was left to do the talking.

Yet when it didn't - a gutsy performance that contained positives still wasn't enough to stave off a lopsided beating - there was a void which some chose to fill with reminders of Kinnear's previous programme notes from the current campaign.

His statement of the club's expectation that they would get more out of their 2020 signings and his January transfer window strategy explanation have aged badly, because the season has gone so badly, and sometimes a bad take just has to be owned.

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This correspondent wrote last April about the parallels to draw between 2020 Sheffield United and 2021 Leeds United and the argument that even before the summer transfer window the Whites already looked in better shape than the Blades had, ahead of a second season in the top flight, thanks to the recruitment completed after promotion. My mistake, and I own that mistake, but in my defence, I also stated that if the class of 2020 were joined by a quality left-back, central midfielder and striker, then Leeds should avoid the second season disaster that befell Sheffield United and noted that things that should happen often don't. The jury is very much out on Junior Firpo and he was not joined by a central midfielder in either the summer or January windows, while the new striker turned out to be winger Daniel James, a man lacking nothing in the workrate or pace department but missing a fair few of the other ideal centre forward attributes.

REAL PERIL - There is nothing Andrea Radrizzani, Victor Orta or Angus Kinnear can say to ease Leeds United's relegation worries and only results will do. Pic: GettyREAL PERIL - There is nothing Andrea Radrizzani, Victor Orta or Angus Kinnear can say to ease Leeds United's relegation worries and only results will do. Pic: Getty
REAL PERIL - There is nothing Andrea Radrizzani, Victor Orta or Angus Kinnear can say to ease Leeds United's relegation worries and only results will do. Pic: Getty

On the morning of Bielsa's last game the Yorkshire Evening Post carried my fallacious assertion that the Argentine had so much credit in the bank with the fanbase and club hierarchy that there was no question of giving his job to another.

I have also put my name to a proclamation assuring all and sundry that there would be three worse teams come 6pm on May 22 - a prediction whose foundations now look tremulous, at best, in the face of Burnley's Lazarus routine, Everton's win over Chelsea, the dreadful fates of Stuart Dallas and Adam Forshaw, the state of the table and the trickiness of Leeds' run-in.

So much, if not almost all that could have gone has gone wrong and now Leeds find themselves in a world of trouble - trouble they could have avoided. To err is human, we all make mistakes and Leeds must accept that their own - not Chelsea's inability to beat Everton, VAR decisions or rank bad luck - have led to this situation.

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A painful inquest into just how they came to carry such a small squad into such an important season, one Victor Orta, Luke Ayling and Patrick Bamford all predicted to be more difficult than the one that preceded it, will come whether they survive or not and there will be blame and bad takes aplenty to be owned.

This just isn't the time for it. Every ounce of energy at Elland Road and Thorp Arch has to be ploughed into the battle to survive. And until they do, or don't, supporters probably won't want to read notes from Kinnear, or see majority owner Andrea Radrizzani grinning on a boat in a Twitter video. The truth is that there are no words that can make anyone feel any better about the next 20 days, a period of time in which the club's ownership and management will be definitively judged.

As we saw and heard at Elland Road on Saturday, fans do not need to be briefed on the importance of their vocal support, no one needs to say it because they feel it more than anyone.

The positive words and cheerleading of Jesse Marsch plainly aren't for everyone in Leeds and they've found short shrift in sections of the fanbase, but if he can do what now looks increasingly difficult and keep Leeds in the Premier League he will be given time and patience to explain and then demonstrate just how he can evolve - to use Kinnear's word - the Leeds United he inherited from Bielsa. Right now, though, he can only assuage all of the people, all of the time, with results.

Tough questions are to be asked of this club over the coming climacteric. Their response has to be word perfect.

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