Jansson suggests Leeds were right to part company with Christiansen

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Leeds United parted company with Thomas Christiansen in February and appointed Paul Heckingbottom as the head coach.

Leeds United defender Pontus Jansson has backed the club’s decision to part company with Thomas Christiansen in February, according to comments published in Aftonbladet.

Christiansen was appointed the Leeds head coach in the summer of 2017, but the 45-year-old was dismissed in February 2018 following a run of poor results in the Championship.

The West Yorkshire outfit were still in the running for the playoffs at the time, but the Whites eventually ended up 13th in the Championship table.

Jansson, who initially joined Leeds on loan from Italian club Torino in the summer of 2016 before making the move permanent in the summer of 2017 for a transfer fee reported by The Yorkshire Evening Post to be worth £3.5 million, has suggested that the Whites were right to part company with Christiansen, who earns two caps for Spain back in 1993.

“We had a similar situation in Leeds last winter when our coach left,” Jansson told Aftonbladet while discussing the current situation at Malmo and Leeds. “I felt we needed to change the coach, but when it happens, you feel guilty about it.”

Starting again

Things did not get better under Paul Heckingbottom, Christiansen’s successor, and Leeds will have to go again next season.

With some sound investment in the squad in the summer transfer window and a strong start to next season, the Whites could launch a strong challenge for the playoffs.

It remains to be seen if Jansson will be part of the Leeds team. According to a report in TEAMtalk in April, Premier League club West Ham United are interested in signing the former Malmo FF star, who is claimed to likely command a transfer fee of around £12m.