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Leeds United News from The Sporting Life    Yorkshire Evening Post


January 31: We win. But Southend inexplicably beat Brum at St Andrews and go above us on goal difference so we're now bottom. A new low indeed...

January 31: We win. But David Healy could have broken his arm in the last minutes of the game of the KC Stadium. Dennis Wise had been complaining at NI boss Lawrie Sanchez suggesting that Healy should switch to a Premier League side: not much chance of that (or the associated much welcome cash) if he's arm-less...

January 31: Leeds have signed 27-year-old Danish keeper Kasper Ankergren from Brondby on loan for the rest of the season. Ankergren was a U-17 and U-21 international but has never made it beyond the bench for the full squad. Leeds have an option to purchase the player in the summer - when presumably he'd compete with a fit-again Graham Stack for the number 1 shirt (if we manage to stay up).

January 31: Old boys in brief: Doobs to Reading for an undisclosed fee. Simon Walton on loan to Cardiff. Geoff Horsfield on loan to Leicester. 1 hour to go before the FA turn off the fax machine...

January 30: Melvyn Levi - one of the directors of Gerald Krasner's ill-prepared and underfunded takeover - is set to sue the club (and possibly Ken Bates) as he attempts to recover money from a loan to a company that in theory owned the football club, but which was wound up by Bates last year. Levi reckons that he's owed a million - plus damages and interest - from the company that was renamed "Romans Heavies" by Bates in a dig against the current Chelsea owner. When Bates "took over" in 2005 it had to be done in a roundabout way after agreements made between Krasner's group and the bondholders would have made a simple buyout prohibitively expensive. The old board and Bates fell out when Bates tried to exercise his option to complete the purchase of the company, so Bates simply issued a huge pile of new shares which were bought by the Swiss trust that he fronts, thus rendering the old board's equity more or less worthless. The company in question was wound up in the middle of 2006, and now it looks like Levi has decided that he's so unhappy that his long-odds bet to grab a significant share of what could have been a Premier League football club for three-eighths of sod-all failed that he's asking for his stake money back. Sounds like a good plan - and if it works I'll be off to Ladbrokes in the morning to stick a grand on Watford to win the league, safe in the knowledge that I'll be able to get the whole lot returned to me in May.

January 30: Tore-Andre Flo's Leeds career looks like it could be dead in the water after the striker broke a bone in his foot in training. Flo will miss tonight's game at Hull - and will be out for at least 8 weeks, further limiting Dennis Wise's options up front. Par for the course for Leeds at the moment, isn't it?

January 29: Injured on-loan keeper will remain at the club until the end of the season after signing a loan extension today. Stack - whose injury prompted the recall of Neil Sullivan from his own loan spell - has been out since before Christmas but Dennis Wise is hoping he will soon be back in contention.

January 29: Dennis Wise has hinted that Gus Poyet could be used as a player as Leeds struggle to avoid the drop - but insists that Poyet will be the one to decide whether or not it happens. The assistant manager played twice on Leeds' training break in Cyprus and is clearly a class act - but the problems of combining playing and coaching - and also questions over whether he's fit enough to play a full match at this level at the age of 39 - remain. Wise said: "He's still a fantastic player, but he's not signed on as player at the moment... It's not up to me. I respect him enough not to push him. If he decides to help us out then fantastic, but he came here as assistant to me and everyone should remember that. I know what hard work it is to do the two jobs, it's very difficult and he really forgot about playing football, he wanted to concentrate on coaching."

January 29: Jonathan Douglas will return to the squad for the trip to Hull after completing his 2-match ban for totting up 10 yellow cards, but Hayden Foxe is out with a suspension of his own after the booking originally credited by the match reports to Robbie Blake in the West Brom game was switched to the defender when the ref made his own report to the FA>

January 28: Former Leeds skipper Brendan Ormsby says that Dennis Wise will drag the team out of the relegation mire by the end of the season. Ormsby said: "I didn't believe we would get relegated from the Premiership until it actually happened at Bolton, but I'm more confident we will get out of where we are this time. Dennis and Gus will turn things around. The players seem to enjoy working for them and training, and they'll do what it takes. I hope I all the supporters get behind them in numbers. I know from experience that a big crowd at Elland Road can be frightening... There's nothing better than playing in front of a big crowd at Elland Road. You already feel proud to play for the club and you'd die for the shirt."

January 26: Dennis Wise has been charged with "improper conduct" by the FA following his altercation with Diomansy Kamara. He may appeal - for all the good it will do him: he's got until February 9 to decide whether to bother.

January 26: Following the transfer window moves of Simon Johnson and Andy Keogh, another ex-Leeds nearly-but-not-quite youngster was on the move today. Caleb Folan - who made his name in Chesterfield's League Cup run with goals against Man City, West Ham and Charlton - has scored 12 goals this season and impressed Wigan boss Paul Jewell enough for him to fork out half a million quid to secure the 24-year-old's services. Folan said: "Although it's difficult for me to leave Chesterfield because the club has been so good to me, this is an amazing opportunity and I want to repay the faith that Paul Jewell has shown by proving that I am good enough to play in the Premiership."

January 25: Former Great Hope Simon Johnson has left Darlington to join Wycombe for an undisclosed fee. Johnson has moved down the pecking order at Darlo - with Julian Joachim one of the recent arrivals to cost him his place. He was out of contract in the summer, so it's not thought likely that Wycombe would have had to come remotely close to 6 figures to make the deal happen.

January 25: Despite getting a few outings in the first team squad recently, Gylfi Einarsson's stay at Elland Road could be coming to an end if the latest rumours are to be believed. Norwegian side Stromgodset - where Tore Andre Flo's brother is a director - have said they're interested, but it's not clear whether they will make a move before the transfer window closes next week.

January 25: Ugo Ehiogu has left Boro on a free transfer to join Glasgow Rangers. The 34-year-old has signed an 18-month deal with the SPL side after being released from his contract by Boro.

January 24: 27-year-old Nice keeper Damien Gregorini will be arriving for a trial at Elland Road next week. The player is looking for regular football - and Dennis Wise is getting desperate for a cover (and for a future squad) with Neil Sullivan the only experienced keeper available to him at the moment. His team-mate Anthar Yahia has also trained with the club but a deal for the defender looks unlikely to materialise.

January 24: Looks like Dennis Wise could be forced to go for familiarity and experience if his team choices at the training camp in Cyprus are anything to go by. Assistant boss Gus Poyet pulled on his boots in a training match against a Romanian team and a friendly against local side Ethiknos Achnas. Poyet scored in the friendly with a cracking volley - but Leeds still failed to grab a win after Matt Heath conceded a penalty a minute later.

January 23: Andy Keogh has been picked up by Wolves as they make their annual attempt to just miss out on promotion to the Premier League. Scunthorpe's ex-Leeds striker moves to the West Midlands for 600K - which is good news for Leeds since 100K of that amount will be flowing back into the coffers at Elland Road as a result of the sell-on clause inserted into the contract when he was sold to Scunthorpe 2 years ago. Good timing really - shows just what a difference it makes having someone running the club who knows how to eke every last penny out of the available resources.

January 23: Don Weston - who was a key part of Don Revie's promotion-winning side in 1963-64 - has died at the age of 70. Weston scored a hat-trick on his debut against Stoke in 1962. He didn't make much of an impact on the side after promotion and moved on to Huddersfield in 1965.

January 23: Ken Bates has threatened to walk away from the club if the persistent sniping at his ownership and perceived penny-pinching continues. He said that it was time for the people doing the whinging to put up or shut up: "Finance is the core of the problem at this club. I am often told the city of Leeds needs and deserves a successful Premiership football club. Mostly hot air from people who do not put their money where their mouth is. When I hear the moans and groans, it would be easy to say eff off to the lot of you and take the advice of some so-called fan to return to Monte Carlo. Believe me, if I did that you would have no club - there are no rich investors, just chancers. However, I will complete the task and we will succeed in due course."

January 22: The FA confirmed today that Dennis Wise had been reported by match referee Neil Swarbrick after appearing to clash with West Brom's Diomansy Kamara as the player left the pitch on Saturday. Sounds like another fine could be heading our way....

January 21: On a day when it seems just about every other manager was ordered from the dugout with referees clueless and players on short fuses, it's no surprise that Dennis Wise was one of the many to take the walk from the bench to the stands. Wise was complaining about the length of time that West Brom's Diomansy Kamara took to leave the field when he was substituted. Wise said: "He took about four minutes to leave the pitch and I think we'd all had enough of his antics with his gestures to the crowd and so on. Unfortunately I pushed him. His attitude is not fantastic." This is, of course, the same Dennis Wise whose first game for Leeds saw him tell one player to switch wings - so that when the substitution board went up a minute later he'd have further to walk... Wise also knocked the ref - but made no excuses for the team in the 2-3 defeat. He said: "I thought the referee was very poor and I wished we'd had [4th official] Steve Bennett instead. He just wanted to get the game finished in the end rather than play the injury time."

January 21: Jermaine Pennant scored a cracking goal to open his account for Liverpool as they sent champions Chelsea tumbling to a 2-0 defeat at Anfield. Gary Speed was unlucky to be in the way when a Boro shot bounced off Bolton's post - cannoning into Speed's leg and back into the goal after just 6 minutes. But worse was to come, and Mark Viduka scored twice as Boro ran out 5-1 winners. James Milner scored a controversial goal to help Newcastle recover from a 0-2 deficit to draw 2-2 with West Ham: in first-half injury time he produced a good shot from long range, but Scott Parker stepped over the ball in front of West Ham's keeper and well offside. Unfortunately for the Hammers - and fortunately for Milner - the ref was Uriah Rennie, and he applied his own peculiar version of the law and allowed the goal to stand. Andy Keogh took the ball from midfield to the edge of the box and then unleashed a great shot to open the scoring for Scunthorpe at Doncaster - but the hosts hit back after Scunthorpe had scored again and the game ended all square at 2-2. Jamie Forrester scored his 16th goal of the season for Lincoln as they came from a goal down to lead 2-1 at Bury - but the hosts equalised and Lincoln slipped to 4th in the table after their third draw in a row.

January 20: Sorry that news updates this week have been non-existent: the home office is getting a complete refurb (replastering, floors sanded and varnished, new furniture, the lot!) and as a result my main PC has had to take a sabbatical since there wasn't really anywhere else in the house that was simultaneously in-reach of a network port and out-of-reach of a (nearly) 2-year-old. Hopefully things should be back to normal now...

January 20: Ken Bates says that the club are continuing to pay the price of the cock-ups of he Ridsdale (and after) boards - but that the worst is nearly over and that Dennis Wise is still chasing three signings in this transfer window. Bates identifies tax and rates arrears in addition to the ongoing contract payments to players no longer at the club as the key problem areas. So who are the mystery three? Andy O'Brien, Chris Morgan and AN Other if random rumours are anything to go by. 10 more days left to find out....

January 19: Jermaine Beckford has gone back out on loan - this time to Scunthorpe for the remainder of the season. Looks like an indication by Dennis Wise that he reckons the player can't cut it at this level - but if he's still a Leeds player in 6 months time then Division 1 experience might come in useful.

January 19: Matthew Spring has rejoined Luton from Watford for £200,000. Dominic Matteo has parted company with Blackburn on a free transfer and will linking up with his occasional defensive colleague Michael Duberry as Stoke push for promotion.

January 17: The visit to Birmingham has been rescheduled for Tuesday 27 February with a 7.45pm KO. Leeds will refund the travel costs of anyone booked on the official trips who cannot now go - but unsurprisingly efforts to get the Blues to fork out to reimburse the Leeds fans who were victims of the Blues' incompetence look set to come to naught.

January 12: Tomorrow's game at St Andrews has been postponed after the Blues re-laid their pitch at the start of the week, but today told the Football League that it would not be ready in time for Saturday's game. They're blaming the heavy rain that fell earlier in the week for screwing up their attempts to sort out a pitch that had seriously cut up over the Christmas period and could have caused a serious injury to the players if nothing had been done about it. No date has been set for the rescheduled fixture - but if Brum fail to win their FA Cup replay with Newcastle next week then a fortnight tomorrow would seem like as good a time as any with the weekend left blank for FA Cup Round 4 games.

January 11: I can't quite remember when the first rumours around Alan Thompson's move to Leeds started - about 5 or 6 years ago maybe? Well they finally became a reality as the experienced Celtic midfielder signed on loan until the end of the season. Looks like yet another "experienced but not match-fit" gamble by boss Dennis Wise - the one-off England international has not played a single competitive game for The Bhoys this season.

January 10: Gary Kelly and Stephen Crainey both came through Wednesday night's reserve game against Huddersfield unscathed after injury layoffs. Kelly has been out since November with back trouble, while Crainey's most recent problem has been knee-related. The two experienced defenders lined up alongside a bunch of youngster plus Seb Carole and Jermaine Beckford but could not stop the team slipping to a 1-0 defeat.

January 10: In the absence of anyone higher in the league ladder than Oldham prepared to take the chance, Sean Gregan has signed a deal with Oldham that will keep him at Boundary Park through to summer 2009. Since Gregan's arrival, John Sheridan's side have been on a great run of form, and Shez will be hoping the experienced defender will stay fit enough to carry them through to an automativ promotion spot: they're currently in second place with a great goal difference, but things are very tight at the top of League One. Let's hope that Greegs doesn't get to wave and laugh at us as we switch divisions at the end of the season.

January 10: Hayden Foxe's contract has been extended to the end of the season. The Australian defender signed a short-term deal with the aim of proving his fitness and securing a spot in the team after a long injury layoff and a trial in the summer and has agreed to stay until the end of the season when - presumably - Dennis Wise will be wielding both axe and signing pen with great vigour.

January 08: To nobody's great surprise, Matthew Kilgallon has signed for Sheffield United. The Blades have been pursuing the young centreback for some time and they've got him for a cut-price £1.75m - with a further £250K available subject to the usual range of conditions. Neil Warnock rubbed the salt in a bit, noting that they had offered more in the summer but had been turned down - so does that mean we're even more desperate financially now?

January 08: A few successes and failures to report for the old boys over the weekend. Darren Huckerby scored twice as Norwich strolled to a 1-4 win - although Cup hosts Tamworth were happy with the TV money which will keep the wolf from the door for a while longer. Mark Viduka gave Boro the lead at Hull - but Phil Brown's side got an equaliser and possibly deserved more after Uriah Rennie failed to spot a fairly blatant handball in the area by the visitors. Danny Cadamarteri set up Leicester's first goal and scored their second to snatch a 2-2 draw at home to Fulham. Brett Ormerod scored the only goal of the game as Preston eased past Sunderland - their task helped somewhat by the two yellow cards picked up in 37 minutes by Liam Miller. Warren Feeney put Luton in front at QPR at the start of the second half but a controversial equaliser by Rangers' Shabazz Baidoo sent the game to a replay. Craig Farrell scored the last of York's five unanswered goals as they hammered visitors Crawley to maintain third spot in the Conference. In Monday's televised match, Jamie Forrester brought Lincoln level from the spot at MK Dons: the visitors looked to have done enough to leapfrog the second-placed Dons after going ahead with 5 minutes remaining, but an injury-time 20-yarder squared the match and maintained the status quo at the top of the table.

January 05: Former Leeds player Jim Toner has been badly injured - and his wife Chris killed - in the National Express coach crash on the M25 on Wednesday. Toner had a brief spell at Elland Road in the mid-50s having enjoyed some considerable success with Dundee before that. Our sympathy goes out to Jim and his family.

January 05: Sean Gregan's contract has been cancelled by mutual consent. The player clearly didn't figure in Dennis Wise's plans - but comments made while he was at Oldham coupled with his failure to report for the reserves has resulted in a clean break happening sooner rather than later.

January 04: Dennis Wise is over the moon after securing the signatures of Tore Andre Flo and Armando Sa. He said: "Tore is a goalscorer with a lot of ability. Some of the lads here were gobsmacked when they saw some of his touches in training and his finishing. I think they were a little bit aback by him. I don't want to put too much pressure on him but I am sure he will do very well for us. He is a player, who if he gets a chance or two, they usually end up in the back of the net." As for Sa: "He's a very good right back and has a lot of ability. He a very good ball player and he will get forward. He is also very quick and that is something this is needed to add to the squad." Rumours surrounding Gary Kelly's (non) return to the squad aren't going to be squashed by signing a right back...

January 04: Sean Gregan's loan spell with Oldham has formally finished and he's now a Leeds player again - but he doesn't seem to think so. Gregan was picked for the reserves but failed to turn up. Dennis Wise said: "He failed to turn up for a reserve team game and that's all I want to say. I'm not happy and he knows that. He knows the situation. It's not the right way to act. He knew he had been picked to play for the reserves. I don't want to waste anymore time talking about it." Oldham remain favorites to sign the player, although rumours (no doubt spread by his agent) abound connecting him to other Championship sides.

January 03: Tresor Kandol's loan will be the next to be made permanent according to the official website. The fee is undisclosed - and was believed to be the subject of some dispute between Leeds and Barnet, with Ken and Den not willing to fork out the full amount specified in the initial loan agreement. Kandol will sign on until the end of the 2009/10 season.

January 03: As was rumoured last week, Espanyol's Armando Sa will arrive on loan until the end of the season as Dennis Wise continues to strengthen his defensive line-up - although the Mozambique international's arrival will only increase the expectation that Matthew Kilgallon's departure won't be that far off.

January 03: Tore Andre Flo has done enough to convince Dennis Wise and Gus Poyet that he could do a job for Leeds this season - winning a short-term contract after talks and training at Thorp Arch. Flo hadn't exactly set the world alight at Valerenga this season, and the 33-year-old's career hasn't exactly been on an uptick since leaving Chelsea to join Rangers for £14m in November 2000: subsequent spells with Sunderland and Siena yielded more injuries than goals, but with Richard Cresswell seeming sidelined for the rest of the season and continued speculation over David Healy's future, maybe his experience will make up for a lack of fitness and recent form.

January 02: Robbie Elliot's one-match loan will be converted into a contract tomorrow, with an initial run to the end of the season. Matt Heath - who missed the match against loaning club Coventry for obvious reasons - is also ready to put pen to paper on a similar deal.

January 02: Geoff Horsfield's loan spell - which was set to run to the end of January - has been terminated early after Dennis Wise decided he didn't need him anymore. Tony Warner returns to Fulham - and could find himself in action after Antti Niemi's injury, so Neil Sullivan now looks likely to have some sort of future at Elland Road, with Dennis Wise taking a look at Graham Stack's fitness by the end of the month before deciding what other steps might need to be taken in the goalkeeping department. Ugo Ehiogu is also on the way back home to Boro at the end of his loan spell.

January 02: Former captain Paul Butler - who has been on loan at MK Dons - has been released from his contract and is free to find another club. Butler made a total of 106 appearances for the club, scoring 4 goals.

January 01: It would be churlish to complain about three much-needed points arriving with the New Year, so I guess noting that an experienced observer of the team said that we won because neither side knew how to defend could be seen as just a little negative. However the arrival of "a real left back at last" as someone else described Robbie Elliott was certainly part of the reason for the turn-around and let's keep our fingers crossed that this can now turn into a bit of a "run" and get into a position of confidence by the time the month ends and the vital trip to Hull comes around.

January 01: Dennis Wise isn't giving many clues as to the arrivals and departures he expects to see over the next month. He said: "There isn't too much money to spend, and I think whatever happens will happen and will be right for this football club. It will get this football club out of the position in which it is in at the present moment. We will do what's best for the football club but I can't go into any details about what might happen." Micky Adams confirmed that defender Matt Heath would be talking to Leeds about making his loan move permanent, but there was no word from Wise on rumours linking David Healy with a couple of Premier League teams - although he did make a point of noting that he had finally started to regain some confidence. He said: "He's been going through a bit of a barren spell and he knew he wasn't doing great but we've tried to help him. He's taken it all on board and he's doing well. He was probably lacking a bit of confidence but he's gradually getting back into it."

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