Jesse Marsch celebrates
Phil Hay believes Leeds United will be regretting their decision to not sack Jesse Marsch sooner than they did.
The Lowdown: Leeds have put themselves in a mess
Leeds looked to hand Marsch as much time as possible – likely because he was Victor Orta’s man – when in reality, the time to relieve him of his duties was perhaps during the World Cup break.
The board insisted on backing their manager and even afford him the January transfer window to mould his squad, only to sack him a few days after it closed.
The fact that they kept him in charge for so long as they dragged themselves perilously close to the bottom three may have made the managerial job a less exciting prospect, as it will be though to maintain their top-flight status and no manager will be keen on having a relegation on their CV.
The Latest: Not sacking Marsch sooner was a mistake
Hay has insisted on The Phil Hay Show the Leeds board will be regretting their decision to keep Marsch in charge for so long as he made the managerial hotseat a less attractive one.
He said: “You can drift sometimes without any really grave consequences, but the drift at Leeds has led to decline. I think it’s led to a decline in certainty about where they’re going; a decline in certainty about what’s going to work and what isn’t going to work.
“I do think, with hindsight, they’ll regret the amount of time they allowed Marsch’s reign to go on. If they weren’t sticking with him until the end of the season – which in the end, they haven’t – it seems to me that it was a decision that had to come earlier.
“Okay, they played well at points in January and February; there were periods in games where they looked better than the results they were getting. But there wasn’t a huge amount of difference between what we saw this on side of the World Cup to what we saw on the previous side of it.”
The Verdict: Orta and Radrizzani gambling with Leeds’ future
It did look like an increasingly bizarre situation for Leeds to be sticking with someone who had won just 11 games during his time at Elland Road, especially when they could have brought someone in while no domestic football was on.
That time would have allowed a new manager to impose himself on the squad and put his mark on the team in terms of tactics, but also head into a January transfer window to bring in their own players.
However, this Leeds squad is now littered with players that Marsch would have wanted and this could make it incredibly difficult for someone such as Javi Gracia to get a fine tune out of this squad with just 15 league games left to play.
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