Noel Whelan feels there are not enough leaders within the Leeds United first team squad.
Marcelo Bielsa’s men were handed a shock exit from the Championship playoff semi-final by Derby County, who beat them 4-3 on aggregate after the second leg on Wednesday night at Elland Road.
The defeat now means the Whites will have to deal with another year of chasing promotion back to the top flight, despite being in pole-position to clinch automatic promotion early on this term.
Leeds have been left feeling grim after seeing their chances of promotion to the Premier League slip through their fingers, with shock losses against QPR, Birmingham City, Brentford, Wigan Athletic and Hull City biting hard.
Following their demoralising defeat to the Rams, Whelan has revealed he believes there are not enough leaders within the Leeds squad to carry them through difficult situations in games.
The former White feels that has been the case for a few seasons and thinks the game in general is running out of strong characters, who go all the way to help their sides to victory.
“Yes, there’s not [enough leaders within the Leeds United team], but we’ve said that for two seasons now”, Whelan said on BBC Radio Leeds' Noel Whelan Show.
“They’re hard to come by, if they do make them anymore, if they do breed them anymore, and I don’t think we do.
“If they are, they’re at top clubs and are a bit older, coming into their 30s now.
"We don’t seem to have those characters anymore and it seems to be running out of the game.
“We’ve got really gentle people, we’ve got really nice football players and that’s the way the game is going.
"But you don’t have those sort of characters anymore that can drag your own team-mates, rough them up a little bit in a certain way to get more out of them for the benefit of the three points.”
Leeds have failed to return to the Premier League since suffering relegation from the top flight in 2004.
