Southampton permit Strachan to discuss manager's job with Leeds
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Your support makes all the difference.Gordon Strachan will be allowed to talk to Leeds United about a return to the club as their new manager. The former Elland Road midfielder, who won the title at Leeds in the twilight of his playing career a decade ago, can return to Yorkshire since his present employers, Southampton, are prepared to let him leave for the right compensation.
The Leeds chief executive, Trevor Birch, has spoken to the Southampton chairman, Rupert Lowe, and with just over six months left on Strachan's contract, Lowe will let him go if the extrovert manager feels he wants to head back to Leeds.
Strachan guided Saints into the Uefa Cup this season after they reached the FA Cup final last term, and Leeds had feared a bitter row and the possibility that Southampton would refuse to allow them to talk to Strachan - as is their right under Premiership rules. They had been preparing to give the caretaker manager, Eddie Gray, control of the team for the crucial match against Bolton on Saturday, but that should change in the next few days.
Strachan, who has returned from a family holiday, will now be given permission to talk to Leeds to discuss terms and length of contract. Strachan still has a passion for the Yorkshire side, who are bottom of the Premiership, and the pledge by the new regime - which includes the wealthy sheikh Abdul Mubarrak Al-Khalifa - to spend money on new players makes a return to Elland Road more attractive to the club's former captain. Although Strachan has also taken Southampton to heights that they may not be able to achieve again, funds for new players are still limited.
Like Leeds, Tottenham are searching for a new manager, and the caretaker at White Hart Lane, the club's director of football, David Pleat, has continued his war of words with Glenn Hoddle, who was sacked last month.
Hoddle had said that Pleat should be given the manager's job full time at Tottenham because no one would be able to work alongside him, and his claim that Pleat interfered in his efforts to be a success produced an angry response from Pleat at the time.
Now Pleat has again weighed into Hoddle's reputation, saying of the applications to succeed Hoddle received by the club: "We've had everyone. Managers, agents, mothers, fathers, dustmen, cleaners applying. To be fair, none of the above would probably do much worse than Glenn Hoddle."
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