Thursday, March 28, 2024

Former-Leeds stars interested in vacant hot seat at Elland Road

Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink (pictured) and fellow former-Leeds striker Robbie Fowler have both declared their interest in the vacant hot seat at Elland Road according to Sky Sports

Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink (pictured) and fellow former-Leeds striker Robbie Fowler have both declared their interest in the vacant hot seat at Elland Road according to Sky Sports

According to Sky Sports, former-Leeds United strikers Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Robbie Fowler are interested in becoming manager of the Yorkshire club.

The Whites are looking for a new boss after sacking former-non league boss David Hockaday just a few games into the season.

High-profile

The duo is a complete contrast to Hockaday, who was unknown to most Leeds fans and was quite frankly a ridiculous appointment.

Anybody with an ounce of football knowledge could see that Hockaday was never going to be the right man for the job.

He was appointed as the cheap option and you get what you pay for I am afraid. Neither Hasselbaink nor Fowler has much managerial experience, but then again Hockaday only had non-league experience.

Both players played football at the top level for a long time and played for some of the biggest teams in Europe. They should have collected a lot of knowledge in their playing careers to make them successful bosses.

Coaching

Despite not having any managerial experience Hasselbaink and Fowler have both been doing coaching badges, looking to coach and eventually become successful managers in their own right.

Hasselbaink does have some managerial experience, having managed Antwerp last season, who finished a disappointing seventh in the Belgian top-flight. His short spell as a boss was not judged a great success.

Unpredictable

Leeds new owner Massimo Cellino is unpredictable to put it in a nice way. To put it another way he is as mad as a box of frogs. During his time at Italian club Cagliari he went through more bosses than hot dinners and is famous for his eccentric ways.

It would take a brave person to take the Leeds job with him at the helm at the moment. A once great club has been turned into a circus. Cellino came into Leeds with high hopes and gave the supporters belief that the club could be on the up.

Currently sitting 18th in the Championship table after two wins and three defeats the future does not currently look that bright for the club. Cellino has not really invested much in the team either, as a number of players arrived, but most of the transfer fees were undisclosed, so it is difficult to know how much the club has really spent.

Star striker Ross McCormack also left the club for Fulham for a fee in the region of £11million, so it does not appear like the club have laid out a lot of money on squad reinforcements this summer.

Mess

At the moment it seems like Leeds United are in a major mess. It is unclear to me anyway whether the new owner has made the situation better or worse.

However, it does seem that sacking a manager so early in the season after only hiring him in the summer suggests that owner does not really know what he is doing. Then again his horrible history with bosses in Italy would also suggest that fact.

Shame

It is such a shame that Leeds are in such a sad state of affairs at the moment. The club from Yorkshire where once one of the powerhouses of English football and feared by many of the big teams in the English top-flight.

It does not even seem like that long ago that Leeds was making it to the Champions League semi-finals. They chased glory and in the end it has cost them dearly ever since, with a decade of underperforming on and off the pitch.

Solutions

Leeds are currently odds of 18/1 to win promotion to the Premier League this season. Their chances of promotion seem slim at the moment and it is unknown whether the appointment of Hasselbaink or Fowler would improve their chances.

However, one thing is for sure the club needs to find stability both on and off the pitch before it finds itself in an even bigger mess.

Would Hasselbaink or Fowler be good appointments for Leeds?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Nugent


David is a freelance football writer with nearly a decade of experience writing about the beautiful game. The experienced writer has written for over a dozen websites and also an international soccer magazine offline.
Arguably his best work has come as an editorial writer for Soccernews, sharing his good, bad and ugly opinions on the world’s favourite sport. During David’s writing career he has written editorials, betting previews, match previews, banter, news and opinion pieces.

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