This Club Needs Rebuilding - Blackwell

"I am not saying Leeds can't come back," said Blackwell. "I am saying with a little bit of luck we can come back, but we've got to be realistic and say this club needs rebuilding.

"If you need a bit of time it means you might not jump back at the first attempt. It is no good jumping back if we come back with all the same problems that we've gone down with. We have to address all the problems and move the club forward in the right manner.

"Everybody has got to accept that we might not be immediate promotion contenders. If we have the luck then we can go straight back, but we've got to be sensible and try to build something because for the last three years it has been unravelling.

"We have to try and parcel it back up again and move it forward as a football club. Any business needs stability and Leeds United is no different. We had three managers who lasted eight months, eight months and six months, so the employees sometimes don't know whether they are coming or going.

"There are four or five players here who are Premiership players and they will move on," he added. "Then there are another four or five out of contract and all the loan players will go, so that leaves us with about eight players.

"If you have the right facilities you can attract players, and I would rate our facilities among the top three in the country.

"It has been a long season of many ups and downs and you couldn't have written a script for it. It has been hard for everybody, supporters and management alike, and we've got to draw a line under it.

"We can't look back because if we keep looking back and wallowing in what went on then we'll never move forward. I think Leeds will always have a bright future because it is a big, big club and the position and respect it holds in the game means it will come back.

"People will never know the truth about what has gone on behind the scenes this season. I know there has been criticism but you would come in from day to day not knowing whether there was money to pay wages, whether there was a club there at all or whether the doors would be closed.

"It was an unsettling time in anybody's speak, never mind being a footballer, and anybody who sees that going on can never be sure about where they stand.

"Everybody has got ambitions in life to get to the highest level and I made conscious decisions not to take two or three manager jobs previously because I wanted to learn every aspect of the trade.

"I went through and learnt the youths, reserves and did a university psychology course, I've learnt everything I think I need to know so that hopefully when you come into a situation like this it stands you in good stead.

"I don't know what the next few weeks, months or years hold. I haven't seen the directors and it is a bizarre situation to find yourself managing a club at the end of the season.

"If you would have told me the things that have happened to me this year were going to happen then I'd have called for the men in white coats to wheel you away."