SkyDaz Banter: Pre Leeds

By the time you read this I will have sat in a broom cupboard in the bowels of the Sky Sports studios for Fanzone. The Leeds game was chosen as the Saturday live match and I would have been in close proximity to an emotionally charged Leeds fan desperately hoping that his beleagured side can cling onto their Premiership status.

The Leeds situation is certainly a strange one and they are the annual surprise in the relegation dogfight. Last season it was the Happy Hammers who were too good to go down, this season it is Dirty Leeds.

A poll amongst the average Premiership crowd at the start of August would have seen Wolves, Portsmouth and Leicester as the hot favourites for a straight return to Division One. Those three are down there battling but it appears that at least one of them will escape thanks to the atrocious form of Leeds.

In a mirror image of West Ham’s season everyone has been waiting for the Leeds team to start winning matches and end up in mid-table. Apart from the odd excellent result (e.g. drawing at Man United) the fixtures have slowly slipped by and the points have gone elsewhere.

I am not sure of their remaining fixtures but suffice to say that everyone they have left to play is above them. We all know the statistic that no team bottom of the Premiership at Christmas has survived, but that honour belonged to Wolves this season! Their cruel last minute defeat to Liverpool last week was indicative of a side of the brink of relegation. It didn’t do our Champions League hopes much good either!

The Blues will have a say in the battle for survival. We gave Leicester three points with a performance of immense ineptitude, although to be fair it was almost scripted in light of the problems Leicester have suffered recently. Wolves are still to visit St Andrews and we have a trip to Pompey to look forward to. And there’s Leeds!

The charitable donation of points has to stop. Sorry Leeds but we must take three points off you today. You are bottom of the table because that is where you deserve to be this season. The table never lies. After consecutive defeats against teams we should have beaten we can accept nothing less.

Personally I have always thought Leeds would escape due to the quality of some of the squad. Unfortunately the squad plays with little cohesion and there are question marks over the stomach for the battle.

The fans will still be there long after the players have drifted away and it’s a shame for the hard core Leeds United fans to suffer the ignominy of relegation thanks to the frivolity of previous personnel. A lesson for us all!