Javi Gracia needs Leeds United fans to park understandable anger with the board - Stuart Rayner

But recriminations will have to wait.

Javi Gracia was surely not top of anyone's list when Jesse Marsch was sacked a fortnight ago but is probably if not the best then certainly one of the best available routes out of the corner the club backed itself into.

After a long period of dithering, decisive action has kicked in, with Leeds no longer focusing on what they want but instead what they need, and going out and getting it.

Now everyone must focus on keeping the Whites in the Premier League, and leave the fall-out from this car crash until that is sorted.

Sacking a manager in February is a failure by a football club.

Bradford City did it last year, Huddersfield Town this. York City can be excused because they do not work to a transfer window.

Leeds have done it two years running.

January is when season-defining decisions are made. Bar the odd free agent, the squad at the end of it is the squad for the rest of the campaign. And results are determined far more by players than coaches, chief executives or directors of football.

However a club is run, the biggest say on who is signed, who is not and who is sold should fall to the coach/manager, its leading football expert. If clubs do not trust his judgement, they should take the keys off him before those decisions are made.

So much of what Leeds did this January suggested they believed in Marsch. It went beyond signing his former defender Max Wober and letting one of only two senior right-footed centre-backs – Diego Llorente – leave on loan ”with a view to a permanent move".

It was not just investing a club record fee in Georginio Rutter’s potential and negotiating an option in Weston McKennie's loan to equal it.

It was also bringing a close friend and former assistant of Marsch's, Chris Armas, onto the coaching staff 12 days before firing his boss.

A terrible run of results since August's 3-0 victory over Chelsea left a clear choice between backing and sacking Marsch and Leeds ended up doing both, handcuffing Gracia to players he may or may not want.

Leeds have found their vacancy a hard sell as director of football Victor Orta racked up the air miles. How much more tempting might it have been had all that investment been available to their targets?

But the worst decision was sacking Marsch without a Plan B well advanced.

It is unedifying sounding out replacements for a man not yet sacked but in football's real world, vital.

It happened when Marsch replaced Marcelo Bielsa a year ago. It would have been better had Bielsa not made January’s big non-decisions, declining to add to a skeletal squad, but at least once ties were cut, there was almost instant clarity.

It can go a long way in a footballer's mind. Leeds players have only had uncertainty.

Michael Skubala's first two matches in caretaker control – both against Manchester United – always looked like free hits, but a trip to Goodison Park was nothing of the sort.

Keeping Marsch for one or both Roses matches as they searched for his replacement would have made far more sense but it felt like the board panicked as soon as the away fans at Nottingham Forest began chanting for the American to go.

Skubala may turn out to be a fine head coach but February is no time to learn your trade with a team fighting relegation from the most lucrative league in the world.

Leeds needed someone who knew the division and how he would attack it. It was one reason why sounding out Alfred Schreuder as interim coach sat so badly with fans.

Again, the Whites did neither one thing nor the other, extending Skubala's caretakership to huge games against Everton and Southampton but not beyond them.

So, after all manner of names and false dawns, we fall on Gracia, a coach with experience in Spain, Russia, Greece, Qatar and crucially, a successful Premier League relegation battle with Watford.

Leeds preferred someone permanent, someone riding a crest of a wave in their league, most likely someone younger, but staying in the Premier League is all that matters.

Gracia knows the league and how to make an impact quickly. You have to at Watford, and he has 11 other clubs cluttering his CV since 2007.

The financial consequences of relegation are huge.

Avoid it and regime change will most likely happen away, via the San Francisco 49ers' option to buy the club. They are influential now, and Marsch's sacking shows they are sensitive to fan opinion.

But they must know by now supporters want the stables cleared. The point can be reinforced before and after matches.

During them, Leeds need to harness one of their biggest strengths: the passion of Elland Road. Gracia must find a way to play to it as Bielsa and at times Marsch did.

Leeds united can get out of this mess. Leeds divided might struggle.