The Cellino thread - The Football League verdict

[The Johnson]

So far my take on Cellino over his coaches picks are .....

BM, he sacked cos he wasn't good enough ..... Correct.

After he had already sacked him and re hired him when he didn't even own the club, causing the fans to storm the stadium, protest, and not let him leave. Good start.

He wrongly set on the Hock, but sacked him sharpish .... Correct.

He hired a manager/coach who failed in the conference to take the helm at one of the biggest clubs in a division that said manager had no experience in. It's no positive that he then sacked him.

He didn't appoint Redders because he lacked proper experience ...... Correct.

Remember you said this.

He set on Darko, which on paper looked ok, but turned out not so, he then sacked him ..... Correct.

He spent over a month picking our new manager. It was entirely his choice, he spent a long time to ensure he got the right man. Six games later, the man who Cellino hand picked is gone because Cellino himself said that he "“made a mistake with this guy. He is negative, he has a losing mentality."

He has now listened to the Leeds fans and given Redders a chance to shine ...... Corecto Mundo kudos to Cellino.

Remember, just up there, you said that not hiring Redfearn was 'correct' because he "lacked proper experience" but now, that exact same appointment, is somehow the right decision?

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Cellino is not a godsend, he is a fallible man who has made a lot of mistakes. Nobody can argue his passion is there, but he could do well to channel it more effectively, and we, as a fan base, could do well to not divide ourselves between 'saviour' and 'complete idiot'.

[SiMamu]

Sacking Hock may have been correct decision, but the fact he was in a position to hire someone so out of their depth is completely incorrect. It's all very well saying that he's made the correct decision to sack them, but it's covering up the poor choice of hiring these cheap options that are out of their depth, like Hockaday and Milanic. So far, he's only made two correct appointments (at least on the face of it when they were (re)hired), and neither were really his decisions, but came from fan demand - maybe we should be appointing the manager as we seem to have a better record for appointing what's wanted.

Reappointing McDermott - was the right decision at the time due to fan demand, it's just things didn't work for whatever reason.
Hiring Hockaday - everyone bar Cellino it was the wrong decision and that it wasn't going to work out.
Hiring Milanic - slightly better pedigree than Hockaday due to success in a poor league, but there was still some doubt surrounding the appointment that took Cellino a month to, wrongly, decide upon, again choosing another unkown.
Hiring Redfearn - perhaps should've been appointed beforehand, and again it came from the fans' chants at a game to tell him who to appoint, from "Oooh Brian McDermott" at Huddersfield to whatever was being chanted regarding Redfearn vs. Wolves.

[Selby White]

I'm not as convinced as others that the Hock was the wrong appointment, I believe it was to get the squad much fitter which was achieved. I believe it was always in the plan to get rid of him after some of the dead wood were cleared out and the newbies were settled in.

His problem with results were in part to do with a new squad were only just starting to gel and settle in. Another factor was Doukaras injury coming at the wrong time (he was the one firing and we didn't have Antenucci then) and also a few silly sending offs for which i blame the players concerned and not the Hock, he was just an easy scapegoat.

Darko was a mistake, wasn't good enough, our squad is now decent and results should have been better.

Not convinced Redders is the man either but as someone said awhile ago sometimes a lucky manager is whats required. Long term i believe he is best working in the academy and developing players.

[Costy]

Totally agree with your sentiments on Hockaday. Massively, massively unfair to label his tenure as disastrous or a mistake or anything else, and we'll never know whether he was or wasn't capable of achieving anything as he was sacked before he had any kind of realistic chance to. Same with Milanic. The only thing that I haven't liked about Cellino taking over so far is this crazy tendency to sack managers more or less immediately. This is sport, not maths or engineering or some exact science where you input a and b and get c. It just doesn't work that way, but the hysteria that surrounds a defeat or two in the media and the pressure that comes with it has caused fans and owners to forget that. The reaction to the Wolves defeat on here was a perfect example; the reality is we narrowly lost a game against a good team. It happens. It could just as easily have gone our way if we had taken our early chances, but it didn't, sure our performance dipped and that was disappointing, but sack the manager? Surely a more fitting action would have been to fine the players for stopping playing? I just don't get the treatment of managers compared to players and if I was Neil Redfearn I'd be thinking long and hard about taking on the position having viewed the treatment of the previous two first hand. Maybe he is just lucky and things will go his way, I certainly hope so.

[Otherworld]

.......we, as a fan base, could do well to not divide ourselves between 'saviour' and 'complete idiot'.

He could be both of those, couldn't he?

[Downunder]

You can rubbish Bates all you want, but the fact is that without him there would be no Leeds United. He saved the club from the excesses of Risdale. Yes he made a lot of money on the way as every other previous owner has over the journey.

He didnt save us others wanted to do a deal when he did both his deals.

I would challenge anyone defending the Bates regime to enlighten me - what part of bates business model was a success? I could be wrong but I thought he came into the club with 3 primary objectives, to ahieve premiership status, and reacquire Elland Road and TA - unless I have seriously missed something over the past 10 yrs - none of which were achieved, indeed our option to purchase TA has lapsed. He inherited circa £16m of debt and left it in a broadly similar position (£5m of season ticket revenue hawked off to ticketus for 2 yrs and a £7m loan from Enterprise insurance). In between time we went into administration, the pre pack was skilfully negotiated resulting in a points deduction that ultimately prevented us immediately returning to the second tier of english football. We spent a further 2 seasons in the third division where; despite our turnover being approximately 5 times that of an upper quartile club in the division, and that said the company could not turn a profit without the sale of in excess of £15m of young talent. He did spend some money on capital projects, the pavilion which he assigned catering rights to Compass catering for 5 yrs to pay for & the development of the upper tier of the east stand, which was not deemed economically viable to open for the greater part of his tenure. He did of course leave us with Yorkshire radio & Howard's way, both loss making and a lovely model of the east stand Hotel and Mall. I can't really quantify the cost / benefit of his decisions to insult his customers, price out families and deny the brand exposure to local media, nor can I quantify the net benefit of his court expenses. Some may have been seduced by his "long courtship of Leeds United" however to me it feels more like he f.......d us up the a.....!

PS I obviously not a fan of WKB!

Not disputing his excesses. Completely agree with you. He saw Leeds on their knees and came in and took the club for everything he could. My point is that at the time I heard about a lot of 'Leeds United' people who were 'gunna' do this and 'gunna' do that and did nothing. In fact it was later demonstrated that these so called Leeds people the ones with noses in the trough. Fact: Bates put his hand in his pocket and forked out the £6 million which meant that Leeds is still here today so Il Duce Cellino can drive us mad. Sick of being in the Championship and want to get back to the Premier League.

[Lee]

Not disputing his excesses. Completely agree with you. He saw Leeds on their knees and came in and took the club for everything he could. My point is that at the time I heard about a lot of 'Leeds United' people who were 'gunna' do this and 'gunna' do that and did nothing. In fact it was later demonstrated that these so called Leeds people the ones with noses in the trough. Fact: Bates put his hand in his pocket and forked out the £6 million which meant that Leeds is still here today so Il Duce Cellino can drive us mad. Sick of being in the Championship and want to get back to the Premier League.

Really? Cos according to Bates he didn't own Leeds and didn't know who did. Unless you think he was lying

[Aces]

So far my take on Cellino over his coaches picks are .....

BM, he sacked cos he wasn't good enough ..... Correct.

After he had already sacked him and re hired him when he didn't even own the club, causing the fans to storm the stadium, protest, and not let him leave. Good start.

I was talking about BM being sacked when we had the worst results in our history and which every manager in the country almost would have been sacked as well.

He wrongly set on the Hock, but sacked him sharpish .... Correct.

He hired a manager/coach who failed in the conference to take the helm at one of the biggest clubs in a division that said manager had no experience in. It's no positive that he then sacked him.

I agree with the first part, but it IS a BIG positive that he sacked him quickly, would you have preferred to keep the Hock on?

He didn't appoint Redders because he lacked proper experience ...... Correct.

Remember you said this.

I stand by this, it's Redders record which confirms this as fact.

He set on Darko, which on paper looked ok, but turned out not so, he then sacked him ..... Correct.

He spent over a month picking our new manager. It was entirely his choice, he spent a long time to ensure he got the right man. Six games later, the man who Cellino hand picked is gone because Cellino himself said that he "“made a mistake with this guy. He is negative, he has a losing mentality."

I think Darko wasn't that bad a choice, but Cellino thinks he was and he never won a game. What Cellino says in English doesn't always translate in the way it is meant,but he does talk crap at times.

He has now listened to the Leeds fans and given Redders a chance to shine ...... Corecto Mundo kudos to Cellino.

Remember, just up there, you said that not hiring Redfearn was 'correct' because he "lacked proper experience" but now, that exact same appointment, is somehow the right decision?

I said the Leeds fans want Redfearn and Cellino has listened to them, I personally don't think he's the right choice. But I have said I hope I'm wrong, because I like Redders.
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Cellino is not a godsend, he is a fallible man who has made a lot of mistakes. Nobody can argue his passion is there, but he could do well to channel it more effectively, and we, as a fan base, could do well to not divide ourselves between 'saviour' and 'complete idiot'.

If a Billionaire Arab sheikh bought us out tomorrow I would say ......... Cellino who ????????

[Nic]

Cellino is not a godsend, he is a fallible man who has made a lot of mistakes. Nobody can argue his passion is there, but he could do well to channel it more effectively, and we, as a fan base, could do well to not divide ourselves between 'saviour' and 'complete idiot'.

If a Billionaire Arab sheikh bought us out tomorrow I would say ......... Cellino who ????????

Fans have wanted a Billionaire Arab to buy us since 2005, it never happened and I doubt it ever will.

[Sheepy]

We'll have to made do with the billionaire Italian then.