To be honest, we seem to be slipping back into a game of 2 halves again, was happening towards end of first half of season, and especially in second half of season. This is not a Bielsa tactic, it's player mentality. As the season gets closer to the end, I do wonder if some players have a fear of success, or achievemephobia. Some people have it unknowingly, while some know it's there but can't get over it. Some of these players know, if we get promoted they won't be in team, or will be moved on. Started off ok, then lost our way in middle of first half, this allowed Boro to score the opening goal. The striker had enough room to get 6 chieftain tanks through side by side...........where was Phillips? it's his position. Second half we began to slowly take control and dominate in the Boro half, but no matter how we tried we couldn't put the flaming ball in net. Ref was useless, not on our side by a long shot. Ref held the game up around the 82nd minute while Jack Clark was being looked at by the medics, I've got to say, it was a lucky 12 minutes for us cos it took us till the 100th minute to get the equaliser by a Phillips header. Playing catch up seems to be becoming a regular occurrence, again, got to question the players mentally, what are they thinking after we go 1 or 2 goals down? Villa and Blackburn games aside of course. I noticed that not too many players were challenging for high balls in the Boro area, or just outside of it as well. For me, we seem to have a couple of individual players. Harrison is an individual player, most of crosses are woeful, and he seems to think he's got Eddie Grays boots on. Roofe is a 75% individual player, he too tries to much fancy footwork when he should be getting the ball across, or pass to a better positioned player. With Bamford up front, and Roofe pushed back, I got the distinct impression Roofe was trying to outdo Bamford for the accolades. Jack Clarke, while a good player, and possess the Eddie Gray footwork needs to learn to cross the ball first time occasionally instead of trying to dance around defenders and walk ball into net. Said it a million times, we need to start shooting from edge of box, other teams are doing it to us, and scoring. Our standard of football has dropped off, and we really need to get back to the way we use to play, even though we are missing Saiz. Enjoy. 2 min highlights with stupid music Better and longer highlights Bielsa post match conference KP post match interview .
Middlesbrough dominated at that point, but their goal did not come until the second minute of the second half. From a clever cutback on the left by George Friend, Lewis Wing took a touch before firing a fine shot into the Leeds goal. It galvanised the visiting side, though, and Tony Pulis, the Middlesbrough manager who had spent much of the first half jumping on and off the side of the pitch, was honest enough to admit that his side were second best from there. “They have got everything you need to get promoted,” he said. “They have pace in the right areas. Their dead-ball play is real quality coming into the box. I thought we were fantastic in the first half and they were the better team in the second. “When it comes late in the game it is always hard to take. I wish my players had seen it coming. But I am more concerned about Jack Clarke and I hope he is OK.” ( Sunday Times )
Match I watched, they scored in the second half. And perhaps you should look a bit more closely at Phillips' contribution. Made a stretched interception, and almost managed to get in a good tackle on the player the ball deflected to. Can't cover it all himself, can he? No doubt if it was Forshawio, he would have intercepted, ran up the field & scored a hat-trick.
Phillips intercepted a pass in the middle of the pitch, but was unable to control it and thus lost possession, can't really blame him for that, its one of those things that happen. However the one thing I did notice, is that as that was happening, Alioski was moving forward on the basis that we would keep possession, and was ahead of Phillips at the time Boro regained the ball. However it was Alioski who actually made a concerted effort to get back and wasn't that far of from reaching the guy who scored, where as Phillips did appear to be jogging back. However when you look at the whole move, there were a fair few Leeds players that didn't perform well, so whilst the finger could be pointed at Phillips lethargic effort to get back and help, I think it would be unfair to single only him out as being the one at fault for that goal.
Watching live I thought it was the first time we’d had a decent ref in ages, let the game flow. Possible shout for a penalty on Jansson after the Roofe double chance, the only question I had. You don’t see it in the tv images there was a gale blowing, the pitch was very wet and the sun was troubling our players in the first half. First half poor quality, they had a good 15 minute spell where they created all their chances. The best one was the free header from two yards out when Casilla messed up the corner. Phillips was man of the match for me, though Pablo’s introduction changed the flow of the game.
Had another look myself. TBH, it was a well crafted goal, and one that's more likely to happen to a team that primarily has attack on its mind. Like us. Have to say that I think Pontus was very guilty of ball-watching. He should have been aware of the scorer in acres of space. Should he have closed down the crosser, or closed down the scorer in space? I don't know, & it seems that he didn't either, 'cos he simply stood in no man's land, doing and preventing precisely nothing. I was impressed by Pablo haring back. If you look at his & Aylings starting & finishing positions, there's quite a difference - and not one that I could have predicted, tbh.
It was a good transition goal from boro’s Perspective, good pass from saville. Pablo was a bit in no man’s land. Jansson maybe could have stepped up but he’s worried about cutting out the cross, he’d have to expect a midfielder to track the run... Philips would normally have been in that space but he was the one who’d just lost the challenge... alioski tried to get back but couldn’t quite get there Philips looked around to see who to track and tracked someone else. Klich has anticipated Phillips winning the challenge and was making a forward run. One of those things.
To be fair from a Boro point of view it was a very good goal, and I agree with some extent with LL about Phillips contribution to the goal, in that he didn't try and track back as hard as he would normally, but I am not going to be critical of someone making a mistake. However if you look at the move in the whole, both Ayling and Klich made tentative challenges, that they obviously didn't win. Ayling seemed to drawn towards the ball on a number of occasions, which then left him out of position a number of times, and I was trying to work out who it was in the right back position for us, can tell it's Hernandez now you've pointed it out. Pontus ended up in no mans land, but I can understand his reasoning behind that. I just think the move had a collective number of misjudgements / hesitations on about 5 or 6 occasions from ourselves, and thus it would be unfair to lay the blame on just one player
I agree, Phillips stuck a boot out to break up play, I think it would be unfair to say he should have controlled the ball (I know you're not saying he should btw), the guy who pinched the ball (the black guy) collided with Phillips, it looks like Phillips stuck a hand out to say sorry as it was right in front of the ref, I think Phillips followed the movement of the guy who had just pinched the ball and Alioski made a great attempt to pick up the runner. I don't believe that runner was the responsibility of Phillips myself, he was busy watching the guy who stole the ball waiting for him to make a run, great back tracking by Alioski but Pontus looked like he was zonal marking in no mans land to me, I have to agree with WJ IF anyone was at fault it was Pontus but in all if we'd have scored it I would have said great goal, I wouldn't have been saying we scored because they made a mistake.
Read this again after my reply, I too was surprised to see it was Pablo in the RB position and maybe that is why Pontus delayed making a decision to move out and attack the runner. Again I watched it several times and I can't for the life of me see how it was Phillips job to pick up a runner after colliding with the black guy. Watch it again when Phillips looses the ball or has it stolen he is watching the play in front of him, he can't see a runner making a run 10 yards behind him, Alioski spots it and follows him, then watch it back again from around 13 seconds and don't take your eyes off Pontus, he watches the ball and doesn't spot the run until it is too late. The guy received the ball to his feet on the edge of our box, that is the CB's territory
Totally accept what you are saying there Ristac, have no issue with people calling it how they see it, and can also accept that there are circumstances in this situation. Where I do agree with LL though, is with the ball having being played out wide, when it was then eventually laid back to the goalscorer. , is where you would expect our defensive midfield player to be. I agree that it would be difficult to expect Phillips to have tracked the runner given what happened, but I would also have expected him to make more of an effort to make up for that lost ground. I also see the move slightly different to yourself, as it looks to me more that Phillips is looking towards the touchline when Boro regain possession, and he's actually jogging slightly back before Alioski has started his backtracking. Thus when the goal was scored my first thought was where is Phillips, but as I said in my first post in this thread, I'm also not going to be critical of him not being 100% perfect in this situation (for want of better words). I can also understand Pontus reading of the situation, he starts to make his run back just a split second prior to the ball going out to the wing. I think he holds back because he sees Pablo there, and thus he is in line with the guy who pulls it back, defending the space for a short ball or misplaced pass to the near post. I will however disagree with you about the 18 yard line being the CB territory in this situation. With an opposition player moving forward out on the wing, I'd expect our defenders to be moving back towards our goal, not pushing out, its up to one of the other outfield players to deal with those guys making runs into the area. However, there were so many situations in that move, where if we had just done one thing different then the scoring opportunity wouldn't have been as easy as it ended up being, that even though I asked the same question as LL did in his OP. I wouldn't put the goal down as being the fault of any one individual player, its just one of those things, where Boro were able to capitalise on the situation, and I agree, if we had scored it, we would be saying what a great goal, and not have any concern about who failed to do what in the opposition defence. As a final aside just watched a youtube video of an interview with presumably "some local Boro video blogger person", and all I can say is that if that's the best that Boro have played all season, then they have watched a hell of a lot of crap
