Marcelo Bielsa becomes the latest manager on the Leeds carousel
Friday 15 June 2018 12:57, UK
It's English football's poisoned chalice, the forever revolving door at Elland Road.
Since promotion in 2010, 11 managers have tried and failed to take Leeds back to the promised land of the Premier League. Now it's Marcelo Bielsa's turn.
Different Chairmen have gone down different routes. The tried and tested Sky Bet Championship veterans, the untested domestic option, the unknown continental gamble.
None of them have worked out, so will Bielsa be any different? From Simon Grayson to Paul Heckingbottom, here's how the previous occupants of one of football's most difficult jobs got on.
Simon Grayson
After three long arduous years in League One, Simon Grayson was the man to get the ball rolling again at Elland Road in the Championship.
The boyhood Leeds fan guided the club automatic promotion in 2009/10 and went on a cup run that saw them win at Old Trafford and draw at White Hart Lane.
Their momentum continued in the Championship, with the club sitting in second place at Christmas after 22 games. But Leeds failed to invest.
They slipped away, and despite being in a play-off position with just four games to go, they ended up finishing seventh. Grayson's side flirted with a top-six finish in the following season, but suffered some big defeats, getting drubbed 5-0 at home to Blackpool and 4-1 away at Barnsley.
A 4-1 defeat to Birmingham at Elland Road on January 31st saw the end of Grayson, despite Leeds being just three points off the play-off spots.
Neil Warnock
The archetypal Football League manager; the man with a record number of promotions on his CV. But Neil Warnock and Leeds just didn't work. He was expected to oversee a play-off push after Grayson's firing, but Leeds collapsed to a 14th-placed finish.
The summer saw a complete squad overhaul, with 11 players joining permanently and another four coming in on loan. But critically, Robert Snodgrass was sold to Norwich and the season never took off.
Leeds stumbled around mid-table for the majority of the campaign before an alarming lurch towards the relegation places.
Top scorer and cult hero Luciano Becchio was swapped for Norwich's Steve Morison in January, then Warnock was sacked after six games without a win, a 2-1 home defeat to Derby leaving Leeds just five points above the bottom three.
Brian McDermott
Tasked with steering Leeds away from a precarious position near the bottom of the table was the recently-sacked Reading boss Brian McDermott. Having taking the Royals up the previous season, McDermott's sacking looked harsh, with the club expected to struggle in the Premier League.
But Leeds acquired a manager who won the top flight Manager of the Month award as recently as the previous January. He spent £1m on Luke Murphy, the first seven-figure signing for the club in eight years.
A run of one defeat in nine games had Leeds in the top six by Christmas, but the traditional collapse unfolded, culminating in a 6-0 hammering at Sheffield Wednesday. Worse was to come.
With Massimo Cellino's takeover impending, it was reported McDermott would be sacked on January 31st. Assistant Nigel Gibbs took the game the next day against Huddersfield (Leeds won 5-1), only for the club's current owners GFH to reinstate McDermott following the win.
To the backdrop of the takeover, Leeds struggled, finishing 15th, with McDermott leaving the club for good at the end of May.
Dave Hockaday
Cellino's first appointment as Chairman raised a few eyebrows. Okay, maybe more than a few. In fact, nobody saw Dave Hockaday, a man whose only previous job was to achieve a 34 per cent win rate with Forest Green Rovers, taking the reigns of a three-time title-winning club.
Tellingly, Hockaday was named as a head coach rather than a manager, a structure that remains at Elland Road today.
Hockaday called a Champions League return 'inevitable' while his chairman compared him to a 'watermelon', stating "you only know how good it is, when you open it." The tone was set in pre-season as top scorer Ross McCormack was sold to Fulham.
And Leeds beat a local Italian side on tour 16-0 before their second opposition failed to turn up. His reign lasted six games. Leeds did manage to beat Middlesbrough at Elland Road, but defeats to Millwall, Brighton and Watford left Hockaday in a precarious position.
Cellino debated sacking him after the 4-1 hammering at Watford, but waited until a shocking League Cup exit to local rivals Bradford, their first win over Leeds in 28 years.
Darko Milanic
Four games passed between Hockaday and Leeds' next appointment, with the team going four games unbeaten under caretaker Neil Redfearn, and in came Darko Milanic, a Slovenian from Sturm Graz and the club's first ever non-British boss.
Milanic, unlike Hockaday, at least came with pedigree. He'd won nine trophies with Maribor. Cellino described him as 'a very cool guy', then added: "His particularly qualities? He's good looking, what can I tell you?"
Ominously for Milanic, he also received the watermelon analogy from his new boss.
Leeds lost 2-0 to Brentford, drew with Reading and Sheffield Wednesday, lost to Rotherham, drew with Norwich and lost to Wolves. Six games, no wins. After 32 days, Milanic was also axed. Even Brian Clough lasted longer at Elland Road, a reign so infamous they made a film out of it.
Neil Redfearn
Having discarded two managers already, Cellino looked closer to home for his next appointment. Redfearn, the club's academy coach, was named on a permanent basis having been caretaker on three separate occasions. It was a difficult start.
Leeds won just two of 12 games, hovering just above the bottom three. But Steve Thompson joined as assistant, Leeds changed formation and Redfearn built a side with the focus on four players from the club's academy he nurtured - Sam Byram, Lewis Cook, Alex Mowatt and Charlie Taylor. At first, it worked.
Leeds won seven of their next ten to ease their relegation worries. However, things turned sour after that. Thompson was suspended for an internal matter and in April, six players pulled out injured the day before a game against Charlton, and Leeds finished the season with one win in eight, ending up 15th.
In May, Leeds announced Uwe Rosler would replace Redfearn as Head Coach, with the latter going back to his former academy job. However, he resigned from that just a month later.
Uwe Rosler
Boss number five in less than year - step forward Uwe Rosler. The former Brentford and Wigan manager was given transfer funds in the summer of 2015, spending £3m on Leicester striker Chris Wood, while bringing in Stuart Dallas for over £1m from Brentford.
The season started slowly, never a good sign for a Cellino manager, with four straight draws before Wood curled in a last minute winner at Derby for Rosler's first win.
Ipswich ended the unbeaten start in September, winning at Elland Road, and Rosler looked in more trouble after his side lost three straight games to Middlesbrough, Birmingham and Brighton. Sure enough, after just 12 games in charge, bringing two wins, Rosler was sacked.
Steve Evans
Next to take the plunge at Elland Road was Steve Evans, who was appointed immediately after Rosler's departure. On the same day, Cellino was banned for a second time from running the club by the Football League.
Evans had a good record lower down in the Football League, guiding fellow Yorkshire club Rotherham to two promotions in three years.
He started with 1-1 draws at Fulham and Bolton before a first home win in 13 games came against Cardiff. Leeds' form picked up; they lost just twice in 11 matches, but failed to climb any higher than mid-table.
The inconsistency continued until the end of the season, with Evans' future reported to be in doubt after an abject defeat at Brighton in February, with the side 4-0 down at half-time.
Evans' farewell was a 1-1 draw at Preston, and after publicly pursuing MK Dons boss Karl Robinson and Bristol Rovers manager Darrell Clarke, it was confirmed Evans would be leaving Elland Road.
Garry Monk
Cellino's final appointment as Leeds chairman was the one he got right. With his stock high after leading Swansea to their best Premier League finish as a rookie manager, Monk returned to management after six months out.
Solid business followed; Rob Green signed as number one while Monk used his former connections in South Wales to strike deals for Kyle Bartley and Pablo Hernandez.
All three were to prove vital in the upcoming season, along with Swedish defender Pontus Jansson. Monk's position seemed to be under threat after one win from their first six games, but Leeds won a crunch game against Blackburn and didn't look back.
They lost just four games between September and January, propelling themselves into a top six spot. But Leeds wobbled in the New Year, not helped by an embarrassing FA Cup exit against non-league Sutton United. A 2-0 win over Brighton in March seemed to steady the nerves, putting Leeds eight points clear of seventh.
But they won just one of their last eight games, agonisingly missing out on a play-off position despite notching up 75 points. It was Leeds' best season back in the Championship. But with his contract up, Monk chose to leave the club, joining recently-relegated Middlesbrough instead.
Thomas Christiansen
With Cellino now having sold up, it was up to the new Italian chairman Andrea Radrizzani to make the next appointment.
Despite the success of a boss with a proven track record in England, Radrizzani opted for the relatively unknown Thomas Christiansen, a former Spanish international who previously led Apoel Nicosia to the last 16 of the Europa League. It all started so well.
Leeds went the first seven games unbeaten and headed to Cardiff in September top of the table for the first time since their opening match of the 2004/05 season. But Neil Warnock's side bullied their opponents, replicating what Millwall had managed ten days earlier.
Those two defeats became eight in ten with Leeds falling down the league rapidly. Christiansen's side found a response after the November international break, beating Middlesbrough to start a run of one defeat in eight matches, but things fell apart after that.
League Two Newport dumped them out of the FA Cup and Leeds conceded four goals in two successive home games against Millwall and then Cardiff. After a seven-match winless run, Radrizzani sacked his first manager.
Paul Heckingbottom
Despite Christiansen's failure, Radrizzani opted for another controversial choice, plucking Paul Heckingbottom from Yorkshire rivals Barnsley.
Despite a burgeoning reputation as a bright young coach having won promotion from League One and the EFL Trophy, Heckingbottom left Barnsley just a point above the Championship's bottom three. Things didn't go much better at Elland Road.
He won just four of 16 games and didn't manage a single win away from home during his time in charge. Brought in to give the club's faltering play-off push a boost, the appointment did the opposite, as Leeds faltered to a 13th place finish.
Heckingbottom led the club on a much-criticised tour of Myanmar, but was sacked on June 1, with the club wanting a "more experienced" boss. Their search led them to Marcelo Bielsa.
Comment below to get involved in the debate, but please adhere to our House Rules. If you wish to report any comment, simply click on the down arrow next to the offending comment and click 'Report'.
