Leeds management duos

Scrolling through my repaints folder, deciding on who to pick, and I eventually settled on a pair of management teams from days gone by- all remodels, with a bit of repainting thrown in!

The duo that took us down to the third tier for the first time in our history...

It's hard to completely know wat to make of them- they got relegated with a squad that, while flawed surely had enough ability to survive in the Championship (Healy, Blake, Cresswell, Derry and Eddie Lewis among them) then made a fantastic start in League one with a thrown together squad... then both jumped ship at pretty much the first opportunity; Poyet to be a glorified translator at Spurs, and Wise to sit in some offices at Sports Direct. You can understand why a lot of Leeds fans don't look back on them too fondly...

Anyway, the figures both involved 'head swaps'. I had remodeled tracksuits onto them both in the past (you'll find those figures somewhere on the 'coaches and managers' tag) but these are much better. Wise took to wearing a jacket in his second season, though I couldn't help but feel the figure was too tall!! Poyet holding the clipboard and whistle is pretty fitting given that he was generally considered to be the brains behind the operation!

And now for the 2 that replaced them: 

A funny old pairing these 2. I think McAllister is one of those that fits the cliche of great player who couldn't understand that the players couldn't do what he could do- even when he arrived in his... 50s(!)

His team looked great going forward at times, but were undoubtedly soft at the back, and he just couldn't solve that problem, as illustrated by his last throw of the dice: Mansour Assoumani! 

I remember at the time saying I felt we were one good leader at the back away from a promotion team... Grayson came in and signed Naylor and we won 10 home games in a row, before missing out on the playoffs. With regards to Staunton... I'm not really sure what he did!

Anyway, as with the other 2, these were head swaps, then name changes on the base. For Macca, I did the shirt and tie similar to what he often wore in his time as boss. As for Staunton, that was just the tracksuit most google image searches returned with him in!! I still associate that top with Grayson more.

Anyway, to conclude… I'd probably keep Bielsa over both of these pairings!