TWO QUESTIONS MOST who were at Elland Road on Saturday would love to pose to Gordon Strachan. “How soon can you get here?” and “Why would you want to?” The answers to both remain deeply unclear.

Lucas Radebe, the Leeds United defender, played with Strachan briefly in the mid-1990s in the last months of the midfield player’s Elland Road career and would welcome his return. “It was good to play with him and he’s a legend at this club. If he did come, he would have a good set of players who are ready to work for him,” Radebe said. “We need someone in charge like him who will make things tick and get the results to get us out of this situation. I think, with the respect he’s got here, you could not ask for a better person than Gordon Strachan because he knows the club best. I think the players would want to see him here. What he’s done at Southampton shows he’s a good manager.

“Since I’ve been at this club I’ve never known a situation like this . . . it’s really disturbing. You can only hope that things don’t get any worse. Anybody who comes in here in this situation is going to have a hard time. It’s up to us to make it better for him by getting some results and working together. I’ve been impressed with Gordon and he’s a really honest man. He will get respect on and off the pitch if he comes to this club. There would be changes. I think he’s a manager who knows how to get the best out of players. He will come in with a passion.”

Passion: the leitmotif for a losing team. Eddie Gray, caretaker and wannabe full-time manager since Peter Reid’s dismissal, referred to it afterwards. “I said to (the players) before the game, people talk about passion and working hard — to me that should be second nature . . . it doesn’t make it easier with loan players, especially with the language difficulty.” But Leeds’ fate lies in the hands of foreigners: their ineffective posse of players borrowed from Europe, and Sheikh Mubarak al-Khalifa, apparently planning a takeover. And perhaps soon, a Scot.

Somewhere along the line as Leeds grasped at superstardom, they turned into Norma Desmond. We’re still a big club, it’s just the bank balance and the squad that got small. Bolton Wanderers have never laboured under any such delusions. They are streetwise survivalists, whereas Leeds’s players appear to have the self-preservation instincts of a lemming standing on a slippery cliff edge in a strong wind.

Sam Allardyce was empathetic if not sympathetic after his improving side arrived on the outskirts of mid-table. “You can’t feel sympathy for another manager. It’s as brutal as that. It’s a horrible way to be . . . but it’s dog-eat-dog. You have to take an opportunity to capitalise on a lack of confidence in other teams,” the Bolton manager said.

Allardyce added that only 20 per cent of a manager’s job is coaching; the rest is man-management. Reid would probably agree. “The handling of your bigger players is crucial to victories to get to stay in the Premiership,” Allardyce said. “I would be very upset if I was a Premiership player, no matter how much money I was on, if I needed to have a manager to motivate me. It would be a disgrace.

“What is happening to Leeds now happened to me last year. I stayed in the bottom three until December because I had exactly the same problem as Leeds do now; that is, an influx of seven or eight new players . . . you have to scrap until the players learn to play with each other. We never lost the fighting spirit last season. That comes from myself saying you cannot give up, no matter how desperate things may be.”

And for Leeds they are emergency-break-glass desperate. Two goals in two first-half minutes did for the home team as Kevin Davies then Stelios Giannakopoulos penalised ditzy defending. Mark Viduka had a few good opportunities, but Leeds never looked likely to avert a sixth successive defeat.

It was the fourth strike of the season for Davies, harshly discarded by Strachan when at Southampton. “(Strachan) tends to get the best out of players,” Davies said. “He’ll get them really fit and do a good job. He’s obviously got the passion there; it can rub off.”

Passion again. It is an appropriate word to apply to Leeds, given its origins in a Latin verb meaning “to suffer”.

Leeds United (4-4-2): P Robinson 5 — Z Camara 4, L Radebe 5, M Duberry 3, I Harte 4 — J Milner 5, D Batty 5 (sub: C Chapuis, 46min 4), J Morris 3 (sub: S Olembe, 76), S Johnson 4 (sub: N Barmby, 76) — L Sakho 7, M Viduka 6. Substitutes not used: S Carson, D Domi. Booked: Sakho. NEXT: Charlton Athletic (a). FORM: LLLLLW

Bolton Wanderers (4-1-3-1-1): J Jaaskelainen 5 — N Hunt 5, S Charlton 6, B N’Gotty 6, R Gardner 7 — I Campo 5 — K Nolan 5 (sub: H Pedersen, 73), A Okocha 4, P Frandsen 6 — S Giannakopoulos 7 — K Davies 6. Substitutes not used: K Poole, A Barness, Y Djorkaeff, M Jardel. NEXT: Everton (h). FORM: WDWLLD

Shots on target: (h) 10 (a) 7. Fouls: (h) 15 (a) 11. Offsides: (h) 4 (a) 2