Morning all BS, is Dury injured/unfit then? He seems to be on the bench and has been since pre season so he must have some level of fitness behind him. We are playing an unfit Diouf for the last 30 minutes as well. Agree about Blackpool being right up there this year
Afternoon Bucks, I reckon Drury has put a few noses out of joint by helping persuade Snodds to go to Norwich
His twitter categorically denied that, hes a top guy is Drury I just think his lack of pace meant he didn't play last night
I posted this over on the match thread Bucks: Neil Warnock certainly marked Ince out as a menace. He altered the shape of his team following Saturday’s victory over Wolves, just to attempt to nullify the former Liverpool youngster’s threat. Left-footed, Ince likes to dart inside from the right so Warnock redeployed his captain Lee Peltier from the centre to follow him. The move initially worked. Leeds were robust in defence. There is a sense that Jason Pearce, the centre- back picked from the carcass of Portsmouth, will be crucial if a play-off push becomes reality. Acting as the gatekeeper in front of him was Rudolph Austin; a Jamaican signed from Brann in Norway. He will tackle anything that moves. Only Tom Lees remains in the back line from Simon Grayson’s era and his role was crucial early on. First, he was lucky to escape a more severe punishment following a lunge at the ankle of Gary Taylor-Fletcher. Shortly afterwards, he nodded in the opener via a Ross McCormack corner. Yet Leeds would soon lose control. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo.../Blackpool-2-Leeds-United-1-match-report.html
Leeds won’t go up this season if we don’t know how to keep posession of the ball and keep pressure on teams after we have taken the lead. If you look at teams like Swansea, and even Blackpool, they developed their style of playing before they went to the top flight. Leeds don’t have our own distinctive style, we are too muddled. To create a more fluid style of play we wouldn’t even need to spend huge amounts of money, we‘d just have to acccept some bad defeats and fact we wont go up for a season or two, until the culture of the club is changed from top to bottom, from the youth teams to the reserves and first team. The problem is that people want to see results, so we will continue to play for results and stick with this flawed way of playing and get nowhere. Also if Leeds try to developed a more attractive way of playing and culture at the club, it would be much easier to attrach investors. Look at teams like Middlesborough, Blackpool, they try to play a certain way and have developed their academies according to that. Middlesborough have a really good academy. Leeds used to have one of the best academies in English football, we should follow the lead of clubs like that, not rush for promotion
The Championship is an incredibly competitive and every year it throws up some upsets and odd results. As a result I don't think we should read too much into our first two games. Having said that, it shouldn't be an absolute shock that we lost to Blackpool as they are a pretty good side. Despite having a fairly small fanbase, they have had 2 years of parachute payments and as a result can invest in some quality players. Ian Holloway is also a decent manager. Looking at our squad at the moment we are a top ten team that are unlikely to achieve automatic promotion but might - might - just squeeze into the play offs. But we're up against a whole host of teams who could go up - Bolton, Brum, Blackpool, Cardiff, 'Boro, Forest, Leicester, Blackburn, Wolves etc etc - plus I fancy that Sheff Wed and Charlton will do well from a 'promotion bounce'. We are about 5 or 6 quality players short of being one of the best sides in the league and until we have a Chairman who invests in the side and stops selling our best players, then we are always going to struggle against leading sides in the league.
Think we need to control the middle of the park more if we are going to keep posession. We would then need the likes of Brown, a capable defence midfielder who is fitter than most 21 yo to protect our defenders, but get forward when necessary
If that is true, it is ridiculous! Snoddy was on his way before Drury even arrived. If he did give him some good insight it was mostly irrelevant by that point anyway.
