Vital Leeds contributor Huntersboots as bottled up his frustration long enough at missing out on at least the play offs last season and gives his thoughts on the comments doing the rounds on the Leeds forums at the moment, as well as a philosophical view on why the excuses were just not good enough.
I had a little spare time today to look at some sites and was amused and outraged at the same time. Many are backing Grayson`s search for an experienced midfield general. The usual end of season ‘post-mortems’ were in full flow and the overwhelming consensus of opinion points to our shortcomings in the ‘inexperience’ of our team:
‘we need an older head in midfield,’ ‘our defence is naive,’ “We have too many young players.’ You get the gist.
Now, to my knowledge, the central defenders are pushing 30 or over, the average midfield age is 24 and the striker`s average 26. That means the youngest ones have been playing for around 15 years from childhood, the oldest over 20.
This long empirical ‘apprenticeship’ is obviously still not long enough though to ‘learn’ how to play football to many fans. To me everyone over 21 in the team should be a midfield ‘general’ for Leeds United. Maybe I’m being too harsh, maybe football is a very complex discipline. So I have to compare football to another complex science to see how it stands up.
A doctor qualifies at around 25, deemed able to practice after a 7-year ‘apprenticeship.’ There, in a flash, I can see that football is many times a more complex job.
I can back this up, when Johnson was interviewed after the Sheffield United defeat he (as many footballers do) said: ‘ we will learn from this.’ Johnson has been (and still is), ‘learning’ for around 14 years then, that is double the doctors.
Now if a doctor mistakenly removed your balls and sewed-up your backside instead of removing your appendix, would you accept him saying, ‘We will learn from this.’ However, when a footballer like Johnson spends 90 minutes passing to the opposition after 14 years of ‘learning’ we simply say, ‘we need an experienced midfielder.’ 14 years, how much experience do they need?
I do not go with this experience argument. Football is not a complex science. Every footballer by his 20’s should know the game inside out. Do we have to point it out to our midfield and defence that we get beat because the other team don’t pass it to us, they tackle instead of standing off, don’t hoof it in panic and generally use their common sense in games that giving 100% helps you win. Our midfield are obviously incapable of ‘learning’ that.
How many times have we thrown away games (especially the Preston debacle) and then complained we needed an experienced head out there to close the game down. It is obvious and should be to the players what to do.
‘ We will learn from this,’ if I hear another footballer, and especially Grayson saying that, I will kick my telly in.
There is no such thing as a vastly experienced player being better, there are just players who are more intelligent (a football brain) in a relatively simple profession compared with other industries.
Steve Gerrard, Charlie Adam and Paul Scholes all are and were, from a young age, great footballers, because they apply themselves.
You can’t teach them anything about football because there is nothing else to ‘learn’ by the time you are in your twenties and played hundreds of games week in week out year after year.
Our average eleven had approx 200 years of experience between them yet don`t know how to win at Derby, Palace etc, they’re still ‘learning.’
Sorry, nothing to do with experience, ask Naylor…We were simply not good enough last season, strengthen the squad Grayson, don’t age it!
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