When Ken Bates took charge of Leeds United last January, one fan memorably said it was "like putting King Herod in charge of babysitting".


Yet 16 months on, the Yorkshire club is on a sound financial footing and will regain a place in the Premiership with victory over Watford in Sunday's play-off final.
Leeds were £25m in debt when Bates took over and had been more than £100m in the red when the previous consortium, led by Gerald Krasner, gained control in March 2004.


Elland Road legend Peter Lorimer, the only member of Krasner's board who is still a director under Bates, says Elland Road is a happy place to be once again.

"Going back two or three years, it was a disaster," Leeds' leading-ever scorer with 238 goals told BBC Sport. "The club became a laughing stock, a club which no-one wanted to know. We were on the road to nowhere.
"Once again, the city is vibrant and people are talking about Leeds United again. It's fantastic to be going down to the ground again. There are lots of smiling faces and a lot of optimism.
"Sixteen months ago we didn't know where we were going. Now we've got a realistic chance of getting back in the Premiership and the club is a happy place to be once again."

The former winger has no doubts about who is responsible for that turnaround - Ken Bates.

"The club had major problems until the chairman took over, but he's managed to do a great job in bringing stability to the football club.
"When you've got stability, you know what you're working for and what the goal is.
"There was nothing like that for the previous 18 months. We were wondering if we were going to survive, or go into liquidation.
"Ken Bates has solved all that. He's dragged us out of the gloom. He knows the game and knew exactly what was needed."

Despite Bates' reputation for being abrasive and controversial, Lorimer says he has found the one-time Chelsea supremo a pleasure to work with.

"I've found him a perfect person to work with. He knows what he wants and sets a plan into place. He lets everyone know what's expected of them - from the office to playing staff - and that's what we needed."

Such is the club's new-found stability that Lorimer says it would not be a disaster to lose Sunday's match.

"It's a massive match for this football club and I'd like to think the hard work everyone's put in will be rewarded with a place in the Premiership on Sunday evening," he said.
"But we're 12 months ahead of schedule in terms of Ken's plans for the club. The next step will be consolidation in the Premiership or, if we lose, to push hard for promotion next season."

Lorimer is also full of praise for Leeds manager Kevin Blackwell.

He said:

"Kevin's done a great job. The chairman's backed him by getting the players he wanted, but Kevin's had the judgement to build a team that's taken us to this stage."

And he said he hopes Blackwell can win to further shame the fans that issued death threats against the manager when Leeds went through a rough patch late in the season.

"I would like to think that now we're in the position we are, that people will put an apology to Kevin in the paper on Monday morning,"

Lorimer said.


Source: BBC Sport

Abject, lacking creativity, unimaginative, dumb, weak, passionless and crap.


Our performance at the weekend against a side not many places above the relegation zone was all the above to different degrees, and more.
KB brought Robbie Blake back in to replace David Healy but that was the only change to the starting 11 from the previous weeks offering against Stoke.


In truth Hull should have beaten us by 2 or 3 clear goals and would have done if it had not been for Sully and an incorrectly disallowed Hull goal. From the first whistle to the last they were quicker into the tackle and we never got going in that respect so by half time all we had to show for our lack of effort was an Eddie Lewis free kick, well saved by Myhill and a Robbie Blake miss from 6 yards out.


In the second half we created even less with just a Liam Miller miss in the 68th minute until we put on a bit of pressure in the last 15 minutes after Hull had taken the lead, even then we were not exactly pummeling them.


KB reckons it is not happening in the last third of the pitch, well I can tell him that it is not happening in the middle or first thirds either. I lost count of the number of long balls that went sailing over Rob Hulse’s head and out of play, Hulse had no service or back up, when he did receive the ball to feet it was generally 40 yards out with his back to goal.


Yes the midfield were poor but the man who is really not up to it is Stephen Crainey, the word abject is an accurate description of his nervy, laboured, panicky, thoughtless performance.


As for KB he was totally out-thought by Peter Taylor.

Why do we persist in trying to put crosses in to a lone striker marked by two 6’ 4” defenders?
Why do we not change formation occasionally?

It is because Kevin Blackwell is unfortunately a one trick pony with little tactical awareness.
Ken Bates will rue the day that he gave him his 3 year contract, we have not won a game since and the levels of performance are now no better than they were 12 months ago.


I am not advocating we sack KB. That would be stupid at this time, what we need is a plan B, and fast, to enable us to get some momentum going - teams have sussed us out.


We have 5 games left to experiment, we could do worse than drop Lewis back to left back and switch our wing threat to Griffiths on the right and get Lewis overlapping. Fraser Richardson should get a few games on the right, if only to give Gary Kelly a rest, lets give Bakke(if fit) and Derry a few games together holding the midfield and have 2 strikers playing up front together playing off each other - now there’s an idea!


We can still get to the premiership via the play offs but only if we can find an alternative to our now all too predictable 4-3-3 formation. Almost 5 games without a goal from open play says it all.

Leeds have confirmed that Kevin Blackwell has agreed a new 3 year deal which will keep him at the club until the end of the 2008/9 season.
Even his critics have to admit that he has done a better than expected job turning round our club and particularly so since Ken Bates arrived at the beginning of 2005.


There had been some suggestions that if we did manage to get promotion this year the board would look elsewhere for a new man but Ken Bates has now said that there was never any chance of that.


Lets hope that the new contract does not mean that there will be any relaxing on the part of KB in the coming weeks when we are so close to overhauling the blunts.