The #LUFC Breakfast Debate (Monday 4th January)

Good Morning. It's Monday 4th January, and here are the latest headlines from Elland Road.

Spurs extend Leeds London misery

Leeds misery in the nations capital continued Saturday lunchtime as Spurs comprehensively beat Leeds 3-0 at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in North London.

Things may have been different had Mourinho's men not been gifted another hotly disputed penalty on the half hour mark. Gianni Alioski was adjudged to have to have bought down Dutch International winger Steven Bergwijn inside the box.

Replays clearly show the foul had occurred outside the box, but official David Coote and his video assistant Paul Tierney agreed that the foul had occurred in the area, the referee pointed to the spot, and Harry Kane obligingly struck the ball down the centre of the pitch, with Meslier stranded. (How many penalties would Meslier have saved had he not dived?

Speaking during the interval, host of Soccer Saturday Jeff Stelling launched an extraordinary attack on the referee and his video linesman.

“They [Spurs] are winning, but look, I’m lost. I don’t understand it anymore. "Looking along the line, the contact was clearly three or four inches outside of the box. "It wasn’t a foul whereby contact continues into the box, it was just a trip. "It was outside the box – well, that was my opinion. David Coote and Paul Tierney were the ones who disagreed with that.”

Leeds have conceded six goals this term, only Brighton have surrendered more (7).

Once the deadlock had been broken, it was obviously a lot easier for Spurs to maintain the upper hand. Son Heung-Min doubled the lead just before half time, and Toby Alderweireld put the tie beyond the Whites early in the second half.

Leeds have won once in 25 games (Dec 2017 at QPR) in the nations capital!

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Ferdinand offers Leeds a word of advice

Rio Ferdinand was speaking at the conclusion of the Spurs - Leeds match about Leeds style of play. He doesn't believe the Whites they will get any change out of the top 6 or 7, he also said they will stay up.

"Against a team outside the top six or seven, they find that it benefits them in the way that they play, man to man, pressing high, but against the top teams, once that man gets beaten and gets taken out on a man to man basis, it opens the game up and it’s about quality.

"Against these teams, the likes of Son and Harry Kane today, they concede chances and then they concede goals. "Yes, they do score goals but against the best teams, maybe they do have to adapt the way they play."

"We need to be a bit realistic about where they are. "They’re newly-promoted, they’ve just come up and they’re sitting in 11th. "Will they stay up? I think they will, the way they’re playing, they’re an insane team to watch. "A lot of them are still learning what it’s like to be a Premier League player in a Premier League team. It’s difficult.”

Do Leeds need to change the way they play against the top competition?

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Post Match Interviews

Spurs Manager Jose Mourinho

Leeds Manager Marcelo Bielsa

 

Morning all...

Continue as we are as it becomes a habit the players get it ingrained into them and hopefully they get better. Then it’s up to Bielsa to look at the weakest spots that need replacing.

Imagine we did change our style of play against teams in the top six, we’d still get beat as they have tons more quality. Playing the way we do still makes them respect us and they play us knowing it could be a 3-2 or 4-3 defeat or they might romp home 3-0 but they’ll need to be on top of their game.

Our battle isn’t with the Spurs, Chelsea and Liverpool’s of the division this season or next, we need to improve against the middle teams like Palace and continue to beat those in the bottom quarter.

 

Morning all,

I can't get my head around how no commentators or pundits, bar Gary Lineker on motd, ever brings up how badly we are affected in defence by injury.


Now I'm not saying that the results against the scum, Chelsea or spurs would have been different but surely being able to start a German international and a Spanish international cb pairing would be different to playing those games with our rb and an academy graduate together?

This is not a dig at ayling or struijk either asi think they've done reasonably well

 

I think it’s squad size mate. Established PL teams realise how much depth you need at this level. Everyone just assumes you’re all going to get injuries and it’s up to the club to have the depth to cope. Berardi and Forshaw were long term absentees and they’re not really first team players, Forshaw never featured last season. So basically we have just three injuries, just unfortunate that it’s all for the same position.

We love the club and see what effect it has on us, pundits just assume replacements should be good enough

 

I agree squad depth is important but do we need more central defenders or have we just been really unlucky?

in central defence we have-

Cooper
Koch
Llorente
Ayling
Struijk
Berardi
Phillips.


Yes we knew Berardi was long term but what was the chance the first three on my list would be injured at the same time? Should the club haver bought another cb just in case this happened?

Liverpool have the same amount of cb's injured and everyone throws sympathy at them and constantly talks about their injury crisis. We have the same problem and are just accused of naivety and not being able to defend.


(Just to cover myself I am not advocating playing Phillips at cb but we know it is an option and one that has been used so gets on the list)

 

Morning all.
Anyone else think, from listening to the presser, that Roberts might be on his way out. For Bielsa to say he's just not available at the moment is strange.
I think he answered a lot of the criticism of Meslier too. He asks him to play out from the back, he accepts that sometimes it causes problems but doesn't want him kicking long.
I think the main positive from getting our CB fit is that Ayling reverts to RB and possibly Dallas at LB which should help us defensively as well as offensively.
I think that if we just got one back Struijk has done enough that Ayling can be RB.

 

I would be more than happy to see Struijk playing alongside Koch/Llorente or Cooper. He has shown himself not to be out of his depth and will be a top centre back soon.

I recall the commentators praising Ayling for bringing the ball forward out of defence.
We have missed this so much from rb. Dallas is more suited to left back as well.

Plus i think having Ayling and Dallas back into rb & lb will make Raphinia and Harrison better.

 

When you have a small squad and you have 3 International CBs who are all injured at the same time, I agree you would expect pundits to actually mention it. Football fans are being shortchanged by pundits who dont tell the story, they tell a version of badly researched views. Leeds are playing with a makeshift defence based upon players out of normal position and U23s. But all football viewers get is: “Leeds need to change because they are conceding too many goals they need to adapt......” tell the story and let viewers make up their own minds. If anyone actually did any research before going on air, talking tripe and picking up a cheque, maybe they would find out that Bielsa has more clean sheets then any manager in the Premier League or indeed Europe. So knowing that they should actually think maybe my views are wrong. Lazy useless twats.

I also agree that man for man against a top 6 team we are inferior so chances if getting beaten increase. Anyone outside the top 6 we stand a chance against because the team as a unit will beat badly drilled teams. We have 6 clean sheets this season so why would we change

 

I personally think unfortunate, if we brought in another and they were of the quality or price tag of the other two new signings how do you keep them all happy when they are not injured? Bielsa doesn't use squad rotation either where a few other coaches do. Berardi re-signing was a sympathy thing, I am not saying it was wrong but in hindsight maybe signing someone else might have been a better option? Surely the two lads in the U23s will always be ahead of Berardi?

 

STruijk is going to be a top Cb but also has the ability and calmness to be a great DM. I would love to see him play CB with Llorente or Cooper and he can also be LCB unlike the others except Cooper. Ayling back at RB and Dallas at LB is a drilled unit.

Alioski and Harrison down the left isnt a good fit as each gets in the way of the other at times. Alioski forgets hes a back and ends up further forward than Harrison. Mix ups too often. More balance with Dallas who is obviously an intelligent lad unlike Alioski

 

Maybe they look at the team sheet and see Koch and Ayling at CB those two players both featured in our first game of the season, they see Dallas at RB and conclude our back line has three of the same 4 who started the first game of the season.

I know we have three injuries but In theory we only have one CB missing, Struijk started the season, Ayling should be at RB and Dallas at LB I think pundits are generally poor but you can't have too much sympathy when you keep two clean sheets and win two matches playing good football then you just get beat the following week by a team with quality attackers that we can only dream about and gifting them with mistakes

Koch and Cooper make a few bad errors and sometimes they go unpunished others times they don't, I honestly don't believe they would have prevented a defeat, we still didn't score and take out chances and we didn't make possession count

 

Most pundits are lazy, they take the money and do no research. I doubt they know much about our squad as we are new to the prem.

 

“Koch and Cooper make a few bad errors and sometimes they go unpunished others times they don't, I honestly don't believe they would have prevented a defeat, we still didn't score and take out chances and we didn't make possession count”

But if you had a settled back 4 all well drilled, I think the error count would be less which in turn should mean fewer goals conceded. We haven't had a settled defence all season Rich

 

I think Koch and Llorente have been brought in to be our first choice cb pairing in future seasons and this season was about working them around Cooper who will be slowly phased out to be back up as out of the three he is the weakest.

Exactly, with a more settled back 4 not only does the error count go down we would probably create more/better chances going forward giving us more chance to win.

 

Old Big ears did make a passing comment to the fact that we were missing a number of central defenders on Saturdays MOTD. Somedody should be telling meslier to stop passing the ball down the middle and more importantly not to the ****ing oppo.

 

Check out Bielsa's post match interview - he's been told to do that & Bielsa accepts the risks.

 

Seems like Chelsea are deffo sacking Fat Fwank, Joey Barton has left Fleetwood too much of a councidence?

 

No more football until mid February at least then

 

According to talkSPORT premier league continues through lockdown