Manic Monday sends Leeds into turmoil (again) Calum Archibald October 20, 2015 Leeds United 21 Comments Monday was quite a day in the life of a Leeds United fan, and for Mr Cellino. One news story seemed to follow another as the first news of the day came early on with Uwe Rosler being relieved of his duties as Leeds manager. In all honesty, matters on the field seem to pale into insignificance compared to the problems off the field, and therein lies the problem, the actual reason we watch Leeds United is not the main headline any more, the football has taken a back foot, and it’s not good enough. That in isolation is not a major problem, as the performances this season have been thoroughly underwhelming, with the Brighton fixture having the feel of the end of his time. Rosler said the decision was “definitely not mutual” but offered little else in the way of comment, due the issue being a legal matter being dealt with by the LMA (where have we heard that one before?) But that was just the start of the day. The news that Steve Evans, the former Crawley and Rotherham manager, was taking training with the likelihood of him taking the job on a permanent process. The news that Evans was taking training was greeted with a largely apathetic response, with most fans being of the viewpoint that he won’t last very long, and if he does then Cellino could wake up one day and decide he’s racked up too much in catering expenses and sack him anyway. The news inevitably came that he’d been given the job until the end of the season, with the option of a further year added in, a suspiciously quick turnaround considering Rosler had only been gone for a matter of hours. Cellino seems to have taken to Evans quite quickly, saying he has passion, aggression and even calling him a “mother****er”, apparently in a good way. Last week I wrote an article about Alex Mowatt being the key to Leeds finding form, and duly he delivered some fantastic set pieces on Saturday, one of them being converted by Liam Cooper. Steve Evans main task will be instilling confidence into a side that looks bereft of it, and the impact of Neil Redfearn leaving can be seen in the performances of Alex Mowatt and the other young players, who seem to have lost that belief they had before. Evans will be taking his squad to Fulham on Wednesday looking to get a win and if you were Fulham looking at this, you’d be targeting 3 points. Of course, Evans could turn out to be a fantastic manager, but that’s not the main issue here, the issue is that it’s lather, rinse and repeat with Cellino. Just when it seemed all was going well, Adam Pearson left, now he’s back to the same old story, sacking a manager and talking up the new guy, only he’ll likely lose patience with him after 3 games. The cherry on top of the over indulgent, bitter cake was the news that Cellino has been handed a ban until next summer over another conviction. As ever he has 2 weeks to respond and is likely to appeal, but with the club in turmoil and more court cases due to come before the end of the year, he could end up extending that ban even further. All this has put a lot of pressure on him to consider his future as owner of Leeds United, something that he considered after the last ban, but this time you feel that he’s simply going to keep accumulating bans and it will leave the club in a dangerous position. Steve Evans talked ahead of the clash with Fulham, “You start to realise how frightening it is. I thought we’d take 1,000 to Fulham. It’s 4,000. It’s incredible. Getting the job has been overwhelming, I didn’t know an iPhone could take 840 text messages.” Liam Cooper has trained with the squad and is fit enough to make the trip, while Evans has also stated that the day he doesn’t pick the first team squad is the day he will no longer be Leeds United manager. It will be an interesting ride with Steve Evans as Leeds United manager, but the wider picture, the future of the club’s ownership and leadership in the immediate and long term future lies very much in the unknown category.