Grayson yields the axe, much to the surprise of many fans.

Leeds United today announced that David Lucas and Jonathan Douglas WOULD leave Elland Road this summer.

Lucas's move hardly came as a great surprise. He was not rated that highly by the fans and clearly Simon Grayson had his doubts when he brought in Darryl Flahavan on loan from Crystal Palace to push Casper Ankegren towards the end of the season.

Flahavan was suffering from injury at the time and this did not put Grayson off bringing him in!!!

So whilst the writing has long been on the wall for the much-travelled, not-so-safe hands of Lucas, the release of Douglas has come as a bit of a shock.

Capped eight times for Eire and with over a century of appearances for Leeds, Douglas was used as a right-back with good effect at the end of the season when he was naturally considered as a midfielder. Intriguingly a club spokesman is quoted in tonights YEP as saying it was going to be "exceptionally difficult to agree (new) terms" with the ex-Blackburn Rovers man.

It seems odd that both club and the players' agent considered that talks were doomed to fail before negotiations were apparently opened.

Whilst Douglas is hardly a renown world-class midfielder, he was quite comfortable and reliable at our current level of football. He has been with us since our fall from grace into the Championship and it seems that wages were a sticking-point that led to negotiations being a total none-runner. However we trust in Simon Grayson's judgement and are sure that "Larry" has other options at right-back and midfield to consider.

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