David Parkin on the Leeds United circus, intellectual curiosity and global ambition

MASSIMO Cellino has been in charge of Leeds United for barely 18 months but his latest managerial sacking was greeted with a grim inevitability by long-suffering supporters of the Championship team.

Are fans of the club today paying the price for something that happened in a previous life?

Or is it payback time for all those vicious tackles during the Revie era?

Whether you support Leeds or not, it is a very sad predicament for a club that should be supping at the top table of English football year-in, year-out.

Instead, what I think is the biggest one-club city in Europe is reduced to the role of jester in English football.

You can almost hear fans of other clubs, whatever their size and situation, saying: “Well, at least we aren’t Leeds."

Fans of the team have a gallows humour sharper than the axe with which the club owner chops his managers.

While media headlines and social media commentators trotted out well worn cliches this week such as “panto season comes early at Leeds” or “former giant reduced to football laughing stock” Leeds fans were remarking that they thought Uwe Rosler had a good run as manager - a lengthy 12 games in charge.

You see Cellino doesn’t normally give his managers that long.

He’s a man whose decision making could at best be described as erratic, and, less charitably, as maniacal. He snorts in the face of those who counsel patience.

At least he’s consistent. In Italy, he was nicknamed Il mangia-allenatori, “the manager eater” after dispensing with 36 managers in 22 years at Cagliari.

And after the appointment of new manager Steve Evans this week, Cellino described appointing a manager as a bit like buying fruit.

"The managers are like watermelons," Cellino said. "They look good when you buy and you think you're buying the best watermelons in the shop.

"But they don't let you open before you pay the bill. You pay, you bring home, and then you open the watermelon. Sometimes it's beautiful.

"Sometimes it's not good at all. What do you do? You eat anyway. I try to eat sometimes to try and make the watermelon better.”

At least, pound-for-pound, he’s got his money’s worth with the chunky Evans.

I love a bit of gossip, and whenever I meet anyone connected with football, I always ask them about the characters of the game, the good guys and the not so good ones.

Football managers all appear to support each other. When one is sacked they all close ranks, say what a shame, and then get their CVs in order.

But on the outside they show solidarity.

Except with Steve Evans. I have only ever heard negatives about the former Rotherham manager from other managers.

He’s certainly not a proponent of Dale Carnegie’s tome, ‘How To Win Friends And Influence People’.

Perhaps the stocky Scot is exactly what Leeds United needs: a man who will pick the team and stand up to an unpredictable owner.

Or perhaps Cellino will give him six games and then get bored and bring in another man who believes he can lead a once great club back to the promised land.

Even with the best sat nav in the business, under the current regime, that looks like a job for a miracle worker.

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JUST when I was ready to start moaning about a lack of invitations to events, a beer mat dropped through the letterbox of my office.

I immediately checked to see that it didn’t have a scrawled IOU from a recent night I spent in my local.

Fortunately it was an invitation to the launch of a new beer called Trade Mark IPA which is the result of a collaboration between the Intrepid Brewing Company of Hope Valley in Derbyshire and Yorkshire law firm Irwin Mitchell.

There is a nice story behind this creation.

Launched last year, the micro-brewery Intrepid found itself in a trade mark dispute with a large national brewer.

Alex Newman, part of Irwin Mitchell’s Leeds-based intellectual property team, stepped in and resolved it which led to the unique collaboration to create a new ale called Trade Mark IPA.

The limited edition beer was brewed by Intrepid and a team of willing volunteers from the law firm during a brew-day at Intrepid in August.

The name ‘Trade Mark IPA’ was chosen to help bring the value of strong IPR to the attention of the growing micro-brewery industry.

And Irwin Mitchell’s clients and contacts were summoned to The Anglers Rest in Bamford, Derbyshire last month, and then The Lamb & Flag in Leeds last week, to sample the stuff.

I can happily report it is a lovely tipple.

Although by the time I left I think my own intellectual property was about zero.

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EVERY week, when this column goes out via email, I receive the standard out-of-office automatic responses from those people who are away from work.

And I always have a look through them, if only to remove people who have moved on from their jobs. Sometimes you see responses that say that an individual isn’t at work because they have gone off on honeymoon, or they are doing the Yorkshire three peaks or some other interesting challenge.

Recently one response really caught my eye.

It said: "I am out of the office helping to change peoples lives until Tuesday, 13th October, with spasmodic access to my e-mails.”

Wow! I thought. This guy must really be making a difference.

I had a look what he did for a living.

He’s in recruitment.

Have a great weekend.