With the 2022/23 Premier League season now out of the way, the Leeds United directors can survey the wreckage of what was an awful campaign, and decide what happens next.
On Friday morning, manager, Sam Allardyce, fell on his sword after it was announced that he would be leaving the club by mutual consent after just four games.
Four games at the end of a gruelling campaign which hadn’t gone to plan was, in fairness to ‘Big Sam,’ far, far too late to be able to turn things around.
The directors will need to look at themselves first and foremost, and wonder why they left it so long before they replaced Jesse Marsch with Javi Gracia, and then took their time to decide that he too wasn’t the right man for the job.
They can’t dilly dally over decisions regarding the playing staff, and Phil Hay believes one player in particular needs to be moved on.
‘Leeds might have to think about saving Patrick Bamford from himself’ he wrote in The Athletic (subscription required).
‘This has been another extremely difficult year for him and there are surely only so many times you can dangle him in front of a crowd who are trying to be patient but seriously struggling.
‘It will look ridiculous if next season continues in the same vein.’
When the atmosphere is so toxic that you’re frightened to do anything wrong, then it really is time to move on, if nothing else but for your own mental health.
Bamford might well feel that he doesn’t want to give in to the boo boys, but he owes them nothing.
After a poor season by his standards, scoring just four Premier League goals per WhoScored, the time is probably right for him to move on in any event.