1: The Academy
In recent years, Howard Wilkinson's dream of a club with a solid youth setup has come to fruition in a way not seen since the heady days of O'Leary's babes. In and around the first team at the moment are Lees, Mowatt, Byram, Cairns (although no-one knows if he's that good) and White and even in the fallow years of League 1, the likes of Delph and Howson lit up the Elland Road pitch. The future looks good as well with Lenighan, Taylor and Dawson making good progress. Add to that Eoghan Stokes, Frank Mulhern, Eric Grimes, Dan Atkinson, Tyler Denton and Lewis Cook who are all youth internationals. Taking all of this into account, it looks like, even if we have no money to sign players, we might be able to produce some quite good ones ourselves.
2: Some of our players are actually quite good
Looking through the squad, we've actually got some quite good players, Kenny, Zaliukas (Wednesday aside), Byram, Warnock and McCormack are all good Championship players. Jason Pearce has been a revelation this season and has started to look like the player we were all told he was. Looking across the squad, Poleon, Murphy, Wootton, Smith, Mowatt, Lees and Cameron Stewart will all be better next season after adapting to Championship football and will (hopefully) get to grips with playing in what can be an unforgiving Elland Road. If only we had some money to add to this pool of talent.
3: Brian McDermott
During the current s**tstorm at the club, McDermott has come in for a fair amount of stick and to an extent rightly so. At times his team selections, tactics, and transfer dealings have all come under scrutiny, however, one thing which you can't deny is that he holds Leeds' best interests at heart. During his small time at the club, he seems to have been infected with a love of all things Leeds and I get the impression he really wants to take this club forward. Throughout the process he has held himself with dignity and honesty and a willingness to stand up to the owners which has been refreshing to see, imagine Warnock in this current state, he'd be on a flight back to Cornwall quicker than you could say Brown-eh.
4: Mike Farnan
Ahhh good old Mike and his consortium, the only thing separating us from a mad Italian and a seemingly inevitable breakdown. He seems like a good bloke and has experience in stable football clubs before and has never been arrested for fraud so I can only hope GFH accept his bid.
5: Paul Rachubka doesn't play for us any more
As you can see, I'm scraping the barrel a bit now.
So Leeds fans, put the vodka and paracetamol away and don't give up hope just yet!
MOT
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