another step closer to 30

So yesterday was my 28th birthday I'm another year closer to 30 as my wife keeps reminding me but once again  I feel very lucky to have such great friends and family who made it a great day for me and especially to my wife who spoilt me once again with lots of nice clothes and to my parents & best friends Dave and Gael who contributed even more money to our savings they will between them own at least 2 thirds of what the money is going towards !

we went out for a nice meal at the Slug & Lettuce in Gunwharf (portsmouth) and followed that with a trip to the cinema to watch Chronicle.

Once again thanks to the following people , Jenny , Rob , Ally , Paddy , Jenny , Mark , Ashleigh , Danny , Jodie , Sean , Gael & Dave

Its been a while

Well it certainly has been a while since my last post , a little over 2 months in fact so I thought it was a bout time i got on with a bit of blogging . Part of the reason for my lack of posts is the absolute lack of anything interesting to write about but this previous week has been pretty busy for things I take a interest in.

Lets start with the Royal Rumble last Sunday night as a wwe ppv in the current era i thought it was a very good show the main event match the rumble it self was a step up from last years 40 man boring effort with a nice win for the great white (is that racist) Sheamus which should signal a big push for him this coming year.

It was also the closing of the transfer window on Tuesday evening and Leeds managed to do one deal for young Tottenham right back Adam Smith who came in on loan for the remainder of the season , not thrilling but a position we did need some new additions in .

But the big news coming out of Elland Road this week is the sacking of manager Simon Grayson who after 3 years of working under Ken Bates finally bit the bullet , for me i feel it was about the right time to make a change as long as we get the right man in to follow him but there have been some very disrespectful comment from chairman Ken Bates today regarding the situation and his former employee the following quotes have been taken straight from skysports.com 

Bates claimed 

 "At 30 players, we have one of the largest squads in the Championship and bigger than some in the Premier League.

"We spent over £12m on wages so why are people blaming me for the recent results?

"All the money we have received has gone back into the squad. The manager decides who he wants to buy, we as the board just pay for it. I only said no once."

The last statement is one that has got the ire of Leeds fans up when looking through our team if not squad they are a bunch of free transfer players with the rest made up from loans and very low cost transfers with Ross McCormack being our highest fee paid for a player in recent years at a believed 300k .

And finally i would like to direct you all over to my friends new Wrestling blog he has quite strong opinions about WWE so hit him up here proffits piledriver and be sure to leave a comment

Rest In Peace Speedy

League champion 92

When I first became aware of my love for Leeds United was in the 91/92 season this also happened to be the season we were crowned champions of England this may paint me as a glory fan but I was only 7/8 years old and my dad is a life long Leeds fan so I have more than enough reason there to support them . Anyway my point is that the Midfield 4some of Gordon Strachen , Gary McAllister, David Batty and Gary Speed  were as a group as good as any midfield in Leeds United history definitely up there with the great Don Revie midfield of the 60's , The most exciting of these midfielder s was the young Welshman Gary Speed his driving runs down the left wing were a sight to behold his crosses for supreme target man Lee Chapman were a thing of beauty and his far post headed and volleyed goals were a example for all young wide-men of how to get in to the box and score goals .

I was devastated when we sold Speed to Everton for at the time a good sum of £3.5 million to me he seemed to epitomise everything that is Leeds United the drive , desire to play for the shirt , the passion . we would struggle to replace him until a certain Australian left winger came through our academy in the late 90's .

Speed went on to play many many many more premier league games for clubs like Newcastle and Bolton on top of the many years at Leeds and Everton , he had recently become the manager of the Welsh national team a job we all thought he could do a good job in with exciting talent like Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey doing the business for the welsh on the pitch the future looked bright .

When i woke up on Sunday afternoon to a text message from my wife about his passing I suppose I went in to a state of shock I didn't want to believe it i was devastated and I'm not ashamed to say i shed a tear at the news Speedy has been a part of all our lives for a long time as Leeds fan I like to think we were extra proud of his success as he was one of us , What ever it was that led him to take his own life cant have been bad enough to lead to that end but he must of felt that it was the only way out .

My thoughts and go out to his wife and children at this time and where ever you are Speedy I hope your now at peace , you will always be a hero to me .

WWE issues

When CM Punk won the wwe title from
John Cena at the Money in the bank PPV held in his home town of Chicago in July they had on there hands a potential gold mine story line , with punks contract ending on the same night they should of in my opinion kept him off tv for at least 2 months to build the suspense for his return to the ring at either the night of champions ppv or even survivor series in November .

But as is the norm these days in wwe they have to rush everything and punk returned to wwe tv after only 1 week away returning to challenge the newly crowned wwe champion John Cena ( via Rey Mysterio ) to a champion vs champion
Match at summerslam , having beaten Cena in this match it seemed that the wwe had finally made a good decision to not go with old faithful Cena in the role of champion seemingly looking to push Punk all the way up there with the likes of Austin , the Rock & yes even Cena , but wait after the match out of nowhere Kevin Nash appears in the ring and jacknife powerbombed punk for Alberto Del Rio to come out and cash in his money in the bank briefcase he won the previous month he promptly beat Punk and became the new champion , ADR as champion I have no problem with he is a upcoming talent just lacking in one or two areas but it's still early days for him.




My main problem and the whole point of this blog entry is my bemusement with the whole involvement of Kevin Nash with wrestling in general in 2011 , this guy has been over the hill for about 6 years now his awful TNA run which highlighted how badly his knees have gone should of been enough of a warning to anyone in the higher echelons of wwe that Nash's time in the spotlight had gone , it should now be the time of young and upcoming stars such as Punk , ADR , The Miz , Bryan Danielson ( Daniel Bryan ) & Wade Barrett but the longer they keep going back to these old guys the more the future stars will regress and miss opportunities to make the top spot there own .

Now is the time to invest in the future stars of tomorrow for the financial health of the next 20 years do it now Vince


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Location:Burnett Rd,Gosport,United Kingdom

lets not be to down hearted

Simon Grayson contemplates the start to the season 

lets not be to down hearted about how the season has gone so far yes we have now lost 3 of out first 5 games and apart from the appalling display at St Mary's on the first day of the season we have gone down to teams after we have had men sent off  , 2 men off at elland road a few weeks back against Middlesbrough and again today Aidy White sent off away at Ipswich without these men being sent off I firmly believe we would have won both of those games . The first half of today's game we totally dominated Ipswich but as so often happens we fail to add more than 1 goal when we have these spells of dominance and in the end went down to a long range strike and a deflected loop of Lonergan.

We have a two week break now before our next league game against Crystal Palace we should use this time to work on squad discipline and try to cut out these needless red cards and lets finish games off while we are in control of them .

41 league games to go and a small matter of Scum rocking up at Elland Road before the end of Sept .

KEEP THE FAITH IN GRAYSON WE TRUST
MOT

New Team Member

We have a new team member here at Johnny kashmirs random blog and he goes by the name of David Green he will be the new movie reviewer with also occasional reviews of video games some of you may have read his previous work on the site before.

I look forward to reading is work on a regular basis

The Season so far

Great Support 

We are now almost one week into the season and what a week it has been , I was one of the very unfortunate Leeds fans in attendance at St Mary's last Saturday evening to witness a appalling display of overall football from every one in a Leeds United shirt apart from Adam Clayton , Clayton himself wasn't outstanding but he appered to be the only player in blue trying to get anything going for the away team along side him in central midfield were Captain Jonny Howson and new signing Michael Brown , I'll get to Howson in a moment but lets look at Brown for a second he was bought into the team to be the enforcer of our otherwise lightweight midfield he promptly was book after little more than 10 mins after a few nasty late tackles and at one point even trying to take out the ref with a tackle from behind , for his own sake he was sacrificed not long into the second half otherwise he would already be looking at a suspension . As for Howson he was hardly invovled in the game which seemed to mostly pass him by one problem we have seen a few times from Howson over the last few years is his lack of ability to stamp any authority on the game.

On the wings we had Max Gradel and Robert Snodgrass, who both have been transfer targets from other clubs this past off season both looked well off the pace from the start with Snodgrass almost seeming not to care some even saying his head may have been turned by the interest from his Premier League suitors , Gradel was later to score from the penalty spot for a very undeserved consolation goal for United.

Now on to the back 4 who between them looked like they had never seen a football before with Andy O'Brien being the main culprit of inept defending  he was repeatedly turned inside and out by the Saints strikers and failing to close down the ball for Saints 1st goal ever since we signed him on a long term contract he has looked like bambi on ice when forwards run at him. Patrick Kisnorbo we can give a little slack to he has been out with a very serious injury for the past 18 months so he is still getting back up to hopefully the level he was at before that night against Millwall where he suffered the horrendous injury in the first place but after Saturdays match it seems he's still along way from his previous level. Darren O'Dea only joined Leeds on a season long loan from Celtic the day before the game so we can let him off for now as he is still learning to play along side his new team mates .

In goal we have new recruit from Preston Andy Lonergan who signed after a protracted contract negotiation and so far he must be wondering why he left Preston having to play behind that back 4 , as someone mentioned on Twitter after the game on Saturday its no wonder we signed two GK's who can both be number 1 the mental damage of playing in goal for Leeds is more than one man can take for a whole season , Lonergan for me though has so far been fairly impressive he had no chance with any of the goals against Saints after being wildly exposed by the defence , he did pull off one great save towards the end of the game pushing a ferocious shot on to the post  to keep the score from getting even more embarrassing .

*** EDIT*** 

This piece was written just before the Middlesbrough game , when the team performed very admirably in the face of a awful ref who does seem to have a vendetta against us , we did very well to only lose 0-1 after losing Gradel and Howson to terrible decisions but they served there suspensions during our mid week game vs Hull in which we got our first 3 points of the season thanks to a fantastic 4-1 win thanks to goals from McCormack , Lees , Snoddy and Nunez only a own goal from Lees somewhat spoiled the game but he more than made up for it with a grat strike at the other end , Lees now has the same amount of goals for us as our FORWARD Billy Paynter , he looks a great prospect at the back and seems to have been a constant threat from corners and free kicks already . 


We head to West Ham this Sunday lunch time with both teams coming of the back of big wins in midweek  , this    is going to be our biggest test of the season so far with WHU being many peoples pick for the title this year , knowing Leeds this is the kind of game we will get a result from we normally play very well against the bigger teams in the division take the QPR results last year for the proof of that so here's hoping we can get some sort of positive result 


MOT 


I'm @RossBell1984 on twitter follow me there