Spot on

I thought Smith's press conference was better today, mainly because he was being asked some of the questions they seem to have been avoiding. I'm not sure why none of them push back on his comments when he suggests a poor performance was good/acceptable though.

The issues with a new coach are very valid. It would be far better if Smith can turn things around. But some of these opportunities to reboot things need to be taken. Huddersfield was a chance after a 2-week turnaround, Hull was a chance because they're a really poor team, London is chance because they are a Championship team in SL. After this we play some decent teams in consecutive weeks. Another sloppy win against London followed by two defeats - potentially big ones - would really leave us in the mire almost halfway through the season.

Agree has been a loyal servant as a player, seems to have a finger in too many pies nowadays. Went squealing to his best mate and next thing Furner was gone, we could have had a decent coach and not been in the mess we find ourselves in now. What is his fancy job title at the moment, just remind me ?

And you know all that because someone told you ?

One of the players told me and I have no reason to doubt him either. Its the " old boys network " at Headingley , headed up,of course, by the prophet JJB

I imagine it's more likely they will beat London, possibly less convincingly than might be expected, and then come up with a pair of creditable performances after that. Assuming the team has a few players back from injury anyway.

It's not a unique phenomenon but Smith's teams really do perform much better when they are underdogs.

He got soft-soaped on that presser for the large majority of it.

He really needs putting under some better scrutiny because some of those answers were giving off major "Jesse Marsch Vibes"
This is RL and I suppose you dont want to be blacklisted from stuff I suppose but I found myself shaking my head at some of the "answers" he put forth to questions.

The nature of being underdogs is that you generally need to be not winning and playing poorly to get the moniker.

Some of the best GF winning Leeds teams have been underdogs - in 2007, 2008, 2011, 2012 etc - what's your point Flexwheeler? You do realise that good teams are not always expected to win, right?

The revisionism on this forum in the last few weeks really has been epic. We've been hearing that Furner would have been a better coach than Smith if only JJB hadn't complained and got GH and Sinfield to cut short his tenure, and now being an underdog is a sign of a team playing poorly. Jesus wept.

Which player told you ?

Beware the Troll , you talk sh##

what's epic is people watching this garbage for 18 months and thinking smith is the answer

They were underdogs in one-off grand finals but on a week in week out basis they were favourites for a large portion of games. Guess who will be underdogs a lot this season? London and Hull, because they’re crap.

Your comparison is irrelevant, invalid, and frankly damn unhelpful as people continue to make comparison with yesteryear.

If you total up how many times Leeds went into a weekly round fixture during years they won the grand final as favourites and take an average, then take the same from Smith’s 18 months, guess what?

They’ll be underdogs higher percentage of the time under smith because they play poorly and lose, often. That was my point, you get the moniker of being underdogs by being crap, to put it bluntly.

Nice back-pedalling, but it doesn't disguise the fact that your definition of underdogs was deliberately narrowed to suit your anti-Smith agenda.

I'm not sure your hypothetical scenario is going to be as revealing as you think (I suspect neither of us has the time to quantify, but please do indulge yourself). In 2022 when Smith took over, Leeds were rightly underdogs in a lot of games, but we ended winning a lot more than was expected. In 2023 we actually started as favourites in a lot of games in the first part of the season because we had made the GF - many of which we lost, but not all. Your original comment about underdogs wasn't really as clever as you thought it was, and it's not really helpful to understanding what's going on at the club.

I will continue to bring up the past where it is relevant. Especially when it helps educate impatient doom-merchants that are turning people away from reading and contributing to this forum.