Leeds boss Simon Grayson says managers can’t be blamed for the types of mistakes which saw the Blues gift his side a 3-1 victory at Elland Road on Saturday. A catalogue of disastrous decisions saw former Whites loanee keeper Alex McCarthy sent off and Town concede three goals having been ahead and on course for a long overdue return to winning ways.
Grayson says bosses can’t be blamed for the sort of mistakes made by the Town side on Saturday: "As a manager stood there on the touchline, you don’t send your players out to pass to one of our players in the 18-yard box or experienced players to make fundamental mistakes.
"These things happen in football, they are human beings and not robots. They make bad decisions at times.
"They won’t be the first bad decisions any of Paul's players make and it certainly won’t be the last time that my players make bad decisions as well.”
The former defender, who played under Paul Jewell when on loan at Bradford late in his career, thought there were similarities with the match between the teams earlier in the season when Aidan White was dismissed just after half-time for pulling down Jay Emmanuel-Thomas when he was through on goal: "It mirrored the match at Portman Road a little bit where we played really well and lost the game.”
Grayson,recently reported to be under pressure at Leeds, had praise for Blues owner Marcus Evans for trying to take the heat off Jewell with his recent programme piece: "It’s a precarious industry and full credit to the owner at Ipswich for backing Paul all the way, and rightly so because he’s a good manager and he’s got a good record of achieving things in the game.
"We’re all under pressure at times because it’s a ruthless industry but all you have to do as an individual is to work extremely hard and keep believing in what you do, and it will come true.
"That’s all I keep doing. If everybody else wants to put me under pressure, well so be it. I don’t feel any pressure because I know what I’m doing is as much as I can do to make this team successful, and I’ll keep doing that until someone tells me I won’t.”