As the news emerged late yesterday of a board meeting in the wake of the defeat at Bournemouth it was clear that Andrea Radrizzani was going to try one final roll of the dice in the hope of avoiding the drop.

First came the confirmation that Victor Orta has left the club “by mutual consent”, then the reports that Sam Allardyce is to be our third head coach of the season. The statement on the club’s official website quotes Radrizzani as saying “I am deeply saddened by the way that this chapter closes as Victor has been responsible for some of the best moments of my time as owner of Leeds United.”

“I thank him and his people for all they have done in the past six years. However, it is clear that it is time to change direction and therefore we have agreed that Victor will leave the club. I understand supporters are hurt and upset, but now is a time for unity. We have four cup finals left to play this season and working together, I believe we can survive.”

Officially the reason for his departure was a disagreement over whether to dispense with the services of Javi Gracia, but a parting of the ways has seemed inevitable in the past few weeks due to the hostility of the fans for whom he became a scapegoat for everything that has gone wrong at Leeds United in the last two seasons.

As Radz said in his statement, Orta did have one or two high points during his time at Leeds, most notably of course the recruitment of Marcello Bielsa. And he can also be praised for finding Raphinha and Gnonto, even though Willy was a bit of an accident after three other deals fell through. But the charge sheet will show that his list of poor signings is far longer, and that is why we find ourselves in the mess we’re in today.

With the club’s policy of sniffing around the bargain bins of Europe to look for players we can develop means we’re bound to end up with a couple of duffers, there have been too many who are not up to the standard needed for the Premier League, or not able to operate in the positions where we need them.

And then there’s the head coach situation. Orta thought that Marsch was going to be the Bielsa continuity candidate only to find he was anything but, followed by his farcical efforts to find a replacement, leading to the panic decision to appoint Gracia as his third or fourth choice. And now apparently he thought we should persist with Gracia even now, perhaps in a vain attempt to justify the decision he made to recruit him in the first place.

As the official statement mentioned four cup finals we might recall the last time Gracia went to one, when his Watford side lost 6-0 to Manchester City, and few would have bet against a similar scoreline on Saturday if he’d remained in charge. Strangely the official site has still made no mention of him following Orta through the exit, even when every newspaper in the land has reported that big Sam will now be in charge till the end of the season.

They’ve reported that Radz was concerned that the team wasn’t responding to his training methods, and it looked like there was something very wrong within the squad. Gracia has been unlucky with injuries, and he has been let down by individual mistakes at crucial times, such as Meslier’s flapping in goal at Bamford’s miss at the end of the Leicester game, but he sounded flat uninspiring in interviews and there was no sign that he was going to turn things around.

So given the huge financial consequences of relegation, Radz has decided to try his luck with Big Sam for these final four games. 67-year-old Allardyce has earned a reputation as a Premier League firefighter in recent years, having rescued Blackburn, Sunderland, Everton and Crystal Palace from difficult situations. His only relegation was at West Brom, but they did improve slightly under him and perhaps were just too far gone when he was appointed.

He is reportedly going to be paid at least £500,000, with a bonus somewhere between £1m and £2.5m (depending which paper you read) if we stay up. Not bad for less than a month’s work, but still less per match than prime Orta flop Jean-Kevin Augustin, and an absolute bargain if he does pull it off and guide Leeds to safety.

Not least for Andrea Radrizzani, who stands to lose £270m personally if the club are relegated (according to the Daily Mail) as the 49ers wouldn’t be willing to pay him any more than £150m for his remaining shares in the club if that should happen. And that’s if the takeover is completed at all, as the San Francisco mob have yet to publicly confirm they will buy him out if Leeds are back in the Championship.

Many fans on social media have reacted to the news with dismay as the last 15 months have taken us from the sublime to the ridiculous, but although we may not like his style we can at least be sure Sam will kick a few bums to get us going for those four games. And so much depends on those games we’ll just have to hope and pray that it works.

Photo: Action Images

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