The Rise of a Fallen Giant - A Leeds United Story

My plan is to turn leeds from a mid table championship side into a champions league challenging side within 5 years. I also want to try and promote some younger and when available home grown players.

So below we can see a history of the club which has had its high and certainly its lows, its most recent success was when they won the Top division the year before it became the premier league, aswell as there semi final run in the champions league in recent years. But there most prestigious piece of history is there 2 european cups of earlier years.

We can also see there "Fierce Rivals" of which they slipped away from when it comes to being truely competitive. Manchester united have went on to dominate the premier league and even win a champions league whilst leeds have been stuck in championship obscurity never really challenging and never really being in fear of relegation.



Below is then my season expectations where i have went for mid-table finish over going for anything higher because i dont want to over promise and under deliver and want to play things on the safe side a bit.



One thing i feel i may sturuggle with in the game this year is the financial fair play regulations, ive played a few games with lower premier league teams and it always seems to be a slight stumbling block however will try and work within this as best as i can.

So for now its time for pre season and transfers then ill be back as soon as i can.

1st Season Synopsis

Transfers

Not much in terms of transfers within the first season, only a budget of around £2 million, Stokes was brought in on the cheap and as a high quality scottish league striker he should be able to cut it in the championship and score a few goals at least, In January then we took in Leigh Griffiths of former Football manager glory on loan to try him out and see how he fared at championship level.

Unexpected?



We had some great runs of form throughout the season but too many draws for my liking down to two positions and argubly two players, Anthony Stokes and Paddy Kenny. Stokes was extremly inconsistant and very hit and miss, he finished up with 21 goals for the season however he would miss absolute sitters then score a screamer from 25 yards out, his inconsistancy caused us a lot of points and equally responsible was his irish counter part paddy kenny who would let me and my sunday league team put 10 past him on a soaking sunday afternoon. Two positions i deffenitly need to change up.

Our last few matches were just heart wrenching, our semi final win over Wigan was heart attack material, we lost the first leg with Rudolph "red card" Austin getting sent off in the first leg AGAIN, sick of this kids disciplnary record, and we then won the second leg 4-3 with some great end to end football.

The final itself was the most boring match of the season for 105 minutes then we seen 3 goals in the last half of extra time we took the lead with an incisive break but then were pegged back by a corner nearly immediatley, then we broke away again and took 3 chances to put away our opportunities.

So we ended up winning the playoffs and got Promoted so onto next season for more big transfers and hopefully solidarity

Once again the fate of my season and my history comes down to one final game of the season.

We had some pretty horendous runs this season seing us loosing a bucket load of games however finally we found our tactic that worked for us and our first team lineup finally. So lets see how things played out below:

Firstly our league standing we managed to fight and scrape our way to 18th in the table, level on points with Newcastle however they were ahead due to a greater goal difference because of our horrible defending this year. All to play for on the final day of the season.

Our last game of the season was against 4th place Everton who were pushing for 3rd and were playing some absolutley sensational football that seson with a slick pass and move style always seen under Martinez.

We on the other hand were playing amm under 9 kick and run football until the last half of the season.


This is how things finished up:



We drew 2-2 with Everton thanks to an unlikely source in Noel Hunt who would be retiring at the end of the season, he came for the injured Anthony Stokes and scored 2 of the biggest goals in Leeds history.

Newcastle helped out with our bid to stay up by playing extremly poorly against reading and loosing 3-1 for me that was a delight to see coming through we stayed up by 1 point just 1 point, call it luck or fate but we are staying in the league!!!


With a new found optimism floating around the stadium with players looking forward to the big games, the manager looking for further talent and the board delighted with the financial windfall to follow with the massive tv rights for the premier league and advertising rights coming in.

However a dark grey shadow started to appear with the following news stories - uncertantity and doom seemed to leak back in. more to follow

TRANSERSSSS!!!!!

I want to go through a quick overview of the last 2 transfer windows and my main transfers who i brought in.

Brief overview of transfers for the new upcoming season some big big names in and some players shifted out

Originally the board gave me £20 Million to stay up and i sold £8 Millions worth then we went through a takeover and the new Chairman gave me an extra 150K wage budget per week and 20 million to spend which for me was fantastic.

The start of the transfer window i just really wanted to make my money stretch and strengthen as many positions as i could and bring the team to the next level in line with my 5 year plan with the 3rd year being a top half/europa league finish.

Then when i got the extra funds i decided to bring in younger future stars in the shape of Neal Maupay and Memphis Depay. i had the option of carlos fierro but brought in Maupay instead because well ive never tried him before.

My next 5 Targets in January and the Summer transfer window are: Ravel Morisson, James Ward-Prowse, Luke Shaw, Alvaraz-Balnta,And a young GK havent decided yet.