Let's not sugar coat this anymore, Leeds are in a lot of trouble following the Leicester and Fulham losses ... it's incomprehensible that Marsch Ball is still being forced on these players, but here we are ... let's take a look MISSED OPPORTUNITY The Leicester game was the perfect fixture to follow the excellent performance against Arsenal, a team wallowing in self-pity and looking like a disaster waiting to happen ... Leeds would have been full of confidence following Arsenal, having shown the world they could go toe to toe with the best ... it also underlined that the Chelsea win wasn't a fluke So the Leicester game arrives and there's shock and confusion at the team Marsch has selected, for some reason he decided to make serious changes ... Struijk out for Firpo was expected, but to then bench the team Captain for Llorrente, leave the consistent Harrison out for Summerville and start a half-fit Bamford made little sense Cooper, who was imperious against Arsenal and shut out Jesus (doesn't sound right, okay then, Gabriel) dropped to the bench ... in came Llorrente, a player low on confidence and struggling for form ... if those of us in the stands were bemused by this call, imagine what the dressing room would have been thinking ... here's a must win game, and the skipper is dumped Even more baffling was the decision to leave Harrison out and bring in Summerville for his full debut in a game where it wasn't time to experiment ... with Bamford starting, it would have been obvious to start Harrison as these two have played together for a few seasons now and at least have an understanding developed ... if you really wanted to give Bamford every chance of getting his confidence back then you surely would give him Harrison in support Bamford starting was surely not the right move, rather start Rodrigo up front and at least let his movement drag Leicester around for 60 minutes ... then unleash a fresh Bamford against a tiring defence and let him go full pelt to the end ... all a bit meh really The subs made even less sense ... at half time Marsch removed Koch for Cooper, supposedly because he was on a yellow but c'mon man, seriously ... Roca was also removed for Rodrigo, nope, can't explain that one either ... Harrison eventually came on to replace the shattered Bamford, but the damage had been done ... then, another perplexing change as Gelhardt came on for Sinisterra, our only really creative player when it would surely have been better to bring off the ineffective Summerville instead ... Kilch's arrival for Firpo was 30 minutes too late ... I have a theory as to why Marsch does these selection things, I'll get there later This was a massive opportunity missed ... here was a Leicester team stuck at the foot of the table, shorn of some of their best players and starting with a struggling Vardy up front ... a Leeds win would have done serious damage to the Foxes and put some daylight between them and Leeds ... there was also every chance that Rodgers would have been sacked, throwing them into even more turmoil ... that would have meant one club on their knees and struggling for survival Instead, Leeds completely imploded and handed Leicester a comfortable win ... their manager stayed, they regained confidence and closed the gap to Leeds before going on to smash Wolves 4-0 and climb above Leeds ... can't look at Leicester as serious relegation candidates anymore, they've found their belief again and have a good team ... well done Leeds, missed a great opportunity to knock them back FULHAM FK UP If ever there was a pressure game for Marsch, this was it ... Leeds desperately needed a win to drag themselves up the table and to pull Fulham closer ... forget winning to keep Marsh in a job, this was about winning to start the climb away from a relegation battle When Leeds took the lead everything looked good, but then came the inevitable errors that allowed Fulham back in ... loss of concentration at a corner gave Mitrovic enough room at the near post to get his header on target ... Meslier stuck on his line with his body position all wrong as he flapped at the ball when he really should have been able to knock it away comfortably, but he looked startled, as if he didn't anticipate the header coming Once Fulham equalised Leeds started to struggle as Fulham realised that this was an away win waiting to happen ... again, Marsch didn't help himself by leaving the experienced Klich on the bench in favour of Greenwood ... he also left Gelhardt on the bench too long when the team needed someone to run at Fulham's shaky defence ... the game was lost and Leeds tumbled into the bottom three, where they could easily stay unless something changes soon MARSCH MALLOW The thing with Jesse Marsch is that he talks a lot, and I mean A LOT ... he's happy to jabber away at every opportunity, and he really doesn't help himself ... he also seems to feel he then needs to justify everything he spoke about Summerville - in pre-season it became clear that Summerville wanted a loan move as he felt he was deserving of more opportunities ... when asked about this Marsch said that he rated Cry-baby very highly and would rather keep him than loan him out ... a week later CrySum had a new 4-year contract and the promise of more playing time, while Dan James (a fkn International player who was starting to settle in at Leeds) loaned out to go and help Fulham avoid relegation ... it was a truly astonishing moment Summerville has ability, that we know, but he doesn't yet have the attitude required to be a long-term success in the Prem ... he's an arrogant lad, and his temerity to grab the number 10 shirt was ridiculous ... Marsch should not have allowed him to take that number, rather explaining to him that he needs to earn the key playmaker's number Now we find ourselves with Summerville starting in a must-win match because Marsh feels he needs to justify talking up the lad, getting him a new deal and promising him more games ... that's not how you build a strong Prem team Subs - pulling Rodrigo and Koch off at half-time after errors they made was more petulant than strategic ... Marsch seems to have little patience during a game, losing his composure and making knee-jerk decisions ... yes, Koch's sub was explained as "being on a yellow" but come on, try to win the game in front of you first ... anyway, Koch had nowhere to go with the own goal, it most certainly wasn't an error Gnonto - when Leeds signed Gnonto I was really excited that we were getting him, having watched all his games for Italy ... here's a talented lad who is blessed with power and pace, and who's going to develop into a superstar if he's handled properly ... yes, Leeds brought Gnonto's signing forward from January, but that was mostly because Gnonto was in the final year of his Zurich contract, and he would have been free to speak to other clubs in January which could have meant Leeds losing him ... better to secure him before anyone else woke up and approached him To my dismay, when Leeds announced they were signing Gnonto, Marsch decided to tell the world that he felt Gnonto wasn't ready for the Prem and was one for the future ... now let's be clear about this, Gnonto is a fkn Italian International, and is now a regular in Mancini's squad and not just to come off the bench ... Willy also made 65 appearances for Zurich, playing in a title-winning team ... the lad's clearly a very capable player, and Mancini wouldn't risk his reputation and career picking him if he was bad However, once Marsch made that awful, belittling statement about Gnonto, he was never going to back down, and so Gnonto has been left in the shadows while the team is crying out for an attacking threat ... this is the problem with Marsch mouthing off to the media, he paints himself into a corner and he won't back down ... Mancini must be shaking his head in disbelief that Gnonto isn't at least getting appearances from the bench I won't go on about decisions Marsch has made to support his yapping, but I do believe his touchline behaviour affects the team ... for example, in the Villa game his constant jumping up and down in frustration transferred to the players, and they started to play with frustration and less composure ... it was only after Sinisterra was sent off that the team started to focus on salvaging a point MARSCH BALL Let's face it, this narrow style simply isn't working ... pretty much every team in the Prem plays with wide men or attacking wing backs, it's how you get to drag opponents out of position so that your creative players can exploit the space ... trying to play everything through the middle in a quality league is just ignorant Sinisterra and Harrison are proper wingers, players who are capable of getting down to the byline or cutting in to run at back pedalling centre backs ... under Marsch they are far too often infield where they receive the ball under pressure or passes to them are cut out Leeds need to stick wingers out on the touchline to give the defence out balls that allow Leeds to retain possession ... right now, when everyone is marked through the middle and everything's so congested, the only option left is to hoof it long and hope to pick up the knock downs Marsch Ball is tough to watch, and it's not creative enough to get Leeds the goals needed to go and win a bunch of games ... the Arsenal and Chelsea performances were excellent, mainly because both those teams came to Elland Road as firm favourites, and neither really tried to match Leeds for intensity ... when teams work hard against Leeds the narrow formation becomes a real problem CONFIDENCE It is hard to feel confident that Marsch can change things when he's been here for eight months already and has had plenty of time this season to work on things ... he really looked like a man way out of his depth yesterday, a manager who had lost any ability to change things once Fulham went ahead The team seemed to lose confidence very quickly against Leicester and then against Fulham, and this can only be because they don't feel the system employed is going to give them a chance to win the game ... I really do believe that dropping Cooper at Leicester did some damage to the team's confidence, and it hasn't recovered ... Marsch explained his decision as protecting Cooper for the Fulham game when surely you should be fully focused on beating the team bottom of the league first!!!! I honestly can't believe that the Board still has faith in Marsch after this weekend, and if they do then they are fools ... at the very least they should be having a hard conversation with the manager, making it clear that this is not acceptable and that he needs to dump Marsch Ball and come up with a better strategy ... they can't allow him to blunder along with a system that has zero chance of success in the Prem The Leeds support is very faithful, particularly the away support ... you rarely hear the away fans booing or hissing at their team or the club ... when the Leeds fans start to turn, you know they are doing so because they have been given a reason to ... Beware Their Ire, Marsch GO OR STAY? Everyone on this forum knows I always back Leeds to the hilt, and I'm not a fan of sacking managers very easily ... however, as things stand right now, I genuinely can't see how Marsch is going to fix this mess he's created ... the football we played after he replaced Bielsa was awful, but it got swept under the carpet as a necessary evil to secure survival ... ironic then that the two best results in that period at Wolves and Brentford came when Leeds played with their wingers out wide and their wing backs bombing forward a la Bielsa ... that was the signal that Marsch Ball was ineffective This season there has been no improvement in the quality of football as Marsch stuck to his narrow formation ... it's not that Leeds are losing that's the worry, but rather that they seem incapable of creating enough chances to win ... if your system is being blunted so easily by your opponents, surely it's time to bin it ... Marsch doesn't strike me as the type to dump his narrow game, instead he'll try and prove that he is right Giving Marsch more time is the honourable thing to do, he's a genuinely nice person and I want him to succeed at Leeds ... however, the Board and the 49ers acted without any honour at all in how they treated Bielsa in his moment of crisis, so they need to back up their ruthlessness then by making a change now ... won't be easy, the 49ers wanted Marsch in after Spurs so that he could be the hero who saved Leeds, ready to roll into the new season on a high Well, Marsch avoided relegation, and he couldn't have asked for a more favourable fixture list in the run up to the World Cup break ... he blew it, badly Bielsa got sacked not because his football was awful with no hope of winning games, but because he had to deal with a team that had it's best players ripped out of it ... Bielsa would have kept Leeds up, and with less drama, once his star players returned because his team always believed they had a chance of winning ... Marsch has had pretty much his full squad available to him, so it's not that he has a bench of kids and U21s starting, it's his football that's the problem Leeds need a new manager to lift these players and get us back to playing attacking football, backed up by at least three new signings in January ... let's see if the Board has the guts to defy the 49ers and sack their Yank poster boy ... eight games without a win should be the focus
First class article again, Billy. I've just been searching NewsNow for a post I read last night. It showed JM sitting on the dugout wall, saying to his coaching team: "What can I do to change this?" Sadly, can't find it, but he was photographed doing it & presumably overhead or lip-read. I think it's a safe assumption that whatever contribution they made, it didn't work!
Marsche's body language sometimes stinks when we're losing. At least that's the impression he gives by sitting on the dug out wall looking away from the pitch. Yes he may be consulting his coaches but it just doesn't look right.
As I recall, this article that I read was NOT speculating. They wrote confidently, as though it had been ratified.
Saw it and it comes from a Sky Sports reporter who recorded it. I heard him on air talking about it and he was shocked that Marsch actually said that
He was out of work when a fairy godmother came along and offered him millions for doing f???all I blame the guy who brought him in in the first place
