anyone who left during the bates ownership, you can understand it, losing beckford showed NO ambition, then losing becchio, those are your 2 best strikers for many a year, no surprise then that we also lost gradel snodgrass and howson, also not completely their decision to leave, bates made no effort to get more money into the club to give them better contracts, I seriously believe, if we'd kept Grayson as manager, kept howson snodgrass gradel becchio beckford, naylor and kisnorbo too, keep those 7, build the squad around them, add some quality to those 7, we'd have gone up, but i hold bates almost entirely responsible for us not going up within the first 2 seasons of being promoted from lg1
our best youth players we lost in those 16 years too, what if they'd stayed, even better imo, carson, byram, taylor, rose, lees, delph howson cook milner lennon, geez keep those guys, youve got some foundations then for bigger things, its no surprise that 6 of those academy grads have been capped by england
actually thinking about it, i wouldnt mind taking some of those academy grads back if the chance came about, they aint likely to break the bank, they would add some quality to an already good squad, i don't think theres a chance in hell any of them are coming back, but i wouildnt grumble if they did, i still want to see leeds field an all academy graduate 11 in a competitive match, either league or cup, it will happen 1 day i hope!
I hated having KB as owner - Radz and co are a breath of fresh air in comparison.
You are right Clive that it is not surprising many players left to go elsewhere.
Of all the players that left would love to see delph and Milner back mainly for the influence they would have on the younger players. Milner does not get the plaudits he deserves as he is so understated.
I agree with the others who say you can't generally blame players with a short career leaving a ruderless and almost sinking ship.
However, while we are at it what about - Mowatt, Cook and Byram?
Bottom line is it really doesn't matter now and most of the players you initially mentioned would add nothing to our current team (with the possible exception of Wood).
mowatt left coz he wasnt guarenteed gametime due to a lack of pace, great left foot and good passer though, cook was a breakthrough star, as soon as cash came in you knew he was off, and byramprobably felt berardi would get more gametime and like cook, a chance to play in the PL, but again for those 2, we werent getting promoted under that ownership, younger players influenced by craphead agents, its a shame players can't think for themselves