Sam, relegation confirmed, not only today but what has gone wrong here?
Unforced errors, errors you don’t need to make. The biggest thing about the Premier League is the opposition capitalise on unforced errors and punish you heavily. When you do that they don’t have to create a goal with the abilities that they got because they’re gifted it and we gifted three goals today. You can write off the fourth one in the end, it’s neither here nor there in the last few seconds but one two minutes into the first half and second half goal, gifted, Could have been cleared, could have played a different pass, could have held onto the ball better. Recover from that and play. Overall in creative terms and pressure on the opposition, and this might sound daft to you a lot, but we were very good in creating opportunities because we created 21 and we only had two on target. So that shows you our huge problem. In reflection on that Tottenham had much less chances than we did, 10 or 11, seven on target, scored four.
You can see the huge difference between the two teams and why we are where we are and why Tottenham are moving up the league with the quality they’ve got. Gifting the error in the first half and then to go and gift the error in the second half, exactly the same way as we did in the first half, ends up being a huge disappointment and then even worse than that is the fight back from the players. So there’s been a lot of fight back from the players all the way through, obviously of their own doing, but the fight back was Jack scores a goal and then what do we do again? Let them score. You’d have thought they’d have learned from the first two without the third one. So it ends up looking by like a huge and very, very disappointing performance by the team, which you will all write about and all say that. But, actually in between the actual game itself was only those huge errors that made it such a very disappointing game today. Who knows had those errors not occurred and we’d have been better, we certainly had the opportunity to win the game with the chances we created but the sad thing was, not only created but not even shots on target, only two. So at the other end those errors have cost us dear against the quality of the Tottenham side.
What’s wrong with this football club, Sam?
I think overall you need to sit down and look and discuss the whole infrastructure of the club on how you can take what you’ve got and build on it. That will have to be in the Championship now. But there’s many things and many factors that have to be put into place for a football club to reap long term success. There’s short term and long term and most of it comes down to how good are your players.
These players have tried very hard while I’ve been here and I can’t fault their efforts. But as a squad, they haven’t been good enough that by the fact that they’re in the bottom three in the Premier League. I would have hoped I could have gotten a little bit more out of them. So I take responsibility for that. But it’s a tough old world when things start failing and when they start failing and confidence starts going then it’s very difficult to claw it back on we’ve been unable to do that. So you have to just put that behind you and come back and be more determined in terms of what we’re going to achieve next year, in terms of what and how you get out to the championship.
Will you be pitching for it, Sam?
I’ll have the discussion next week at some stage. There’s lots of opportunity when we can sit down and when we get over the disappointment of getting relegated. The last thing I wanted is to be the man that took Leeds United down. I tried all we possibly could try to get the players to do and get better results me and Karl and Robbie, particularly who came alongside me and short period of notice, very grateful for that. I’m still even though I’m hugely disappointed, grateful for the opportunity and I think that the staff and what we’ve tried to do is hasn’t been good enough in terms of the results, but I thought we tried all we could try to get to get a better results out of the players, we’ve just not been able to achieve it.
Would you trust the board to make the right decisions at the moment?
Well, I can tell them what I think needs to be done. And then they could say what they think, whatever they think. Obviously, how is the club going to go forward and who with because we all know about Is it going to be bought or is it going to stay the same? That factor actually is probably the first thing that needs to get sorted out before you even speak to me, if you’re going to speak to me. I can’t really say I’ve enjoyed it. I’m glad I came back. I tried my best to get Leeds out of trouble but I can’t enjoy anything when I don’t win, it’s just not me so the disappointments.
But getting in the training ground every day and trying to make the players look at the situation they’re in and get out of it, if anything I’ve enjoyed trying to do that. Particularly with Robbie and Karl, outstanding back-up. I didn’t leave a stone unturned and it’s really sad that Leeds are in this position and to the fans, I apologise that I didn’t do better and the players didn’t do better and try and win at least two out of the four games and give ourselves a bigger opportunity to stay in the Premier League.
How much of a factor has recruitment or recruitment failures been in this relegation?
I’ll talk in general. General recruitment is the number one factor for any manager or any coach or any head coach or any club to be successful. Without top level recruitment, a manager and a coach and the staff are only as good as the players they have available and their ability. So when you get coaches telling you that how much better they make the players it is a factor, you can, but that’s only small percentages. You can’t improve a player’s game by 10 per cent, it’s probably one or two or three. You put that through you get better results, of course, and if you obviously look at the whole package on how you look after a player to make sure you demand that he plays his best and that’s fine. Actual quality is all about recruitment because better players and more intelligent players make you a better coach, make the coaches and their coaches better, make everybody at the club better, make it a happy club going forward. And of course it’s a much easier responsibility to coach great players or good players because they get it and they do very little wrong and because they do very little wrong is why they don’t get beat. You get beat by making bigger mistakes and the opposition is when you get beat.
So Tottenham’s creative play today wasn’t just our misfortune of giving such basic errors away and allowing them to score. I suppose the clinical finishing from Harry Kane you have to admire.
Would it concern you if this takeover scenario dragged on because obviously work needs to happen probably yesterday to start recruitment?
I haven’t said I’m staying yet so there’s a lot of discussion that needs both ways on what’s going to happen whether that’s me or whoever that might be if it’s not me. I’m not committing myself to say I am or not staying just yet.
In your experience of the top two divisions, how much of this squad needs cutting and remoulding to come straight back?
It needs more goals. It gets more goals this squad could be alright in the Championship. We’ve Burnley go and get straight back up. I’ve had two promotions both by what you wouldn’t want to do, the playoffs. It’s alright if you win but it’s absolutely diabolical if you lose. Obviously I’ve had two of those. So I think Karl knows more than me to be fair about the Championship so I would look at and talk to him if we end up sorting everything out here and see what the better direction would be to go.
We knew today you needed to win today chances are you need six defenders can you explain that to us seemed like quite defensive mindset from the start?
Why did you think that was?
To stop conceding goals?
Correct. See you don’t need to be a head coach or anything like that to understand the need for a clean sheet. Because we’ve conceded 74 goals.
So you didn’t think maybe that many defenders would invite pressure?
No, we didn’t it. Did we invite pressure? We played the game, you saw it, you watched it yourself. Did we invite pressure by playing that way or did we put a lot of pressure on? I’ve just said we’ve got 21 attempts at goals so we had more pressure on Tottenham than Tottenham had on us. We were just inept at converting those attempt and pressures. I’m sorry for getting a bit touchy but it’s a bad day. So in reality, in terms of how we went and attack it didn’t affect the amount of chances that we got, what the bat five didn’t do was what I wanted them to do and get me a clean sheet.
I guess you never fully know a group of players until you start working with them. So do you think you maybe underestimated how mentally fragile they were in terms of confidence?
It’s a good question. It is a really good question and I think that we’ve had obviously legendary players from the experience of Eddie and Gordon and Gary talking to them about this throughout the football club and they’ve commented about how the players in training look really up for it, really enthusiastic and really ready to go. So you think you’ve lifted the mood and got players in the right frame of mind but actually on the pitch unfortunately that that hasn’t materialised into a more consistent performance over the four games. So I haven’t been able to achieve even one win, which makes me really, really disappointed in myself, as well as everybody else. Because that’s what we could have done.
Did you genuinely think you were going to do this Sam?
I think that there’s some telling factors when you think it would be more difficult when you’re getting amongst players, one was injuries and then the fact that you thought that because I’d normally do a bit more research, there was no time for that, I had to say yes or no and get here. When you actually arrive, the size of the squad, not very big. Strength in depth. Maybe some talented players but not that Premier League experience. So there’s all those factors you have to find out quickly then find try and find a way to get the best out of the players. We’ve not been able to do that. So it’s been very disappointing.
Your contract was four games, if it’s ending now with Leeds, do you want to continue managing?
I think if I’m going to do anything it’s going to be here, but like I said those discussions will have to happen in the next few days. We’d love to have a sit down for a couple of days and thrash it out, for both sides to be comfortable. The last thing I’d want to do is walk into the football club and it not go in the direction we both agreed to.
Have you been given an indication that they want you here next season?
No idea.
