It’s like August all over again

Simon Grayson has insisted Jermaine Beckford will be going nowhere in January as the rumours begin to do the rounds again.

Pretty much all the usual suspects have been linked with Beckford again, as the frontman hit double figures for the season last night against Bristol Rovers. Newcastle United and QPR won’t suprise anyone, but the link to Portugese side, Sporting Braga is a new one.

Grayson admits he’d like the striker to sign a new deal with the club before his contract expires at the end of the season, but stresses the number one aim is promotion and he’s determined to keep Beckford until the end of the season to help achieve that.

“The chairman has promised he’ll go on supporting my decision from the summer that Jermaine will stay until the end of the season no matter what,”

Well, if Bates has promised something then there’s absolutely no reason why we should doubt him at all. Case closed. I mean, he’s delivered on every other promise afterall. Just look at Thorp Arch…

Bristol handed ‘reality check’

After starting the season so promisingly, Bristol Rovers have gone off the rails a bit in recent weeks and their manager, Paul Trolloppe admitted the 4-0 hammering against Leeds was no less than we deserved.

“We were beaten by the better side – Leeds produced a display we couldn’t cope with and we couldn’t produce anything in the final third to hurt them,

“It was a reality check over where we are in our progression and one we have to analyse quickly and move on.”

My personal man of the match, Jermaine Beckford gets the nod from the Bristol Rovers boss too who goes on to say;

“Beckford’s movement, pace and aggression means he has caused us problems over the past three seasons and we tried to look at that and work out a way to stop him, but he was too good for us,

“He’s a multi-million pound striker who will either go up with Leeds or go to a higher level with another club.

“He’s a level above most of the strikers that you will find at this level and our players can learn from watching him.”

Always good to see an honest analysis from any manager. He offers no excuses and admits the team need to step up a gear to compete against the biggest teams. Fair play Paul.

Meanwhile, Simon Grayson praised his teams answer to the defeat at Millwall describing their performance as ‘brilliant’.

Time to go, Ken!

I like to have an open area for opinion here at TSS, which is why I recently added a poll fbates-200x300or your thoughts on Ken Bates leadership.

Not so long ago, similar polls showed a pretty big divide amongst fans with many believing Ken Bates was the right man to take Leeds United forward. However, since the mess up with Thorp Arch, it became pretty obvious that many of those that previously backed Bates, had now had enough and wanted him out.

The results of the poll so far (as I write this) show an overwhelming 71% think it’s ‘time to go’ for Ken Bates, whilst just 10% are happy/content with his leadership. The rest remain ‘sitting on the fence’.

Biggest Mistake?

View Results

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Ken Bates needs to thank his lucky stars that there’s no real democracy at football clubs these days and it’s almost impossible for the fans to overthrow a chairman because that’s the kind of divide that see’s people thrown from office.

Thanks to TBG at The Beaten Generation for the ‘How Low Can You Go? picture.