The #LUFC Breakfast Debate (Monday 11th January)

Good Morning. It's Monday 11th January, and here are the latest headlines from Elland Road

Creepy Crawley Conquer Calamitous Leeds

Three second half goals from third division minnows Crawley Town sent Premier League Leeds crashing to their second consecutive defeat and the New Year, tumbling the West Yorkshire side out of the FA Cup at the third round for the fourth season running.

Nick Tsaroulla put the Reds ahead just after half time with a well taken individual effort. He turned Shackleton and Hernandez with ease before out-sprinting Casey and Phillips to give himself room to drive a ferocious strike across goal , and under the despairing dive of Kiko Casilla. Ashley Nadesan doubled the lead minutes later beating Casilla at his near post having bolted past Casey.

The game was put to bed twenty minutes from time from yet another set piece. Tunnicliffe pounced onto a rebound; the defender made no mistake from five yards out.

Are the cracks beginning to show? Its one thing lose 3-0 against Spurs, but losing to a side that cost a grand total of just over 2 million should feel very humble to be in the fortunate position they are in.

Post match reactions

Crowley Manager John Yems and players reaction

Leeds Manager Marcelo Bielsa's reaction

Are the youngsters up to the task

Yesterday's second half display clearly shows that both he fringe players, and the youngsters from the academy are not as good as they should be following the money invested in players and the facilities!

We've seen Accrington Stanley demolish the U23's 7-0 (though we played a weakened U18 team) in the group stages of Football League Trophy. Once back to full strength, the Whites were beaten by Barrow from the East Midlands Counties League and thrashed by Blackpool 3-0. Leeds were knocked out of the Carabao Cup by neighbours Hull 9-8 on penalties in the second round!

The 23's are sat at the top perch of the Premier League 2 table, three points clear of Wolves, BUT you have to admit that the first team have had a massive impact on results!

Leeds U18 have collected 5 points from 10 games and have a minus 18 aggregate.

When the promising youngsters are sent out on loan, how many of them make the grade?

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Morning all...

Yesterday showed we desperately need a number two Keeper and it showed we’ve thrown £15m down the drain with Costa, it also showed how far away those u23s are from stepping up and how we don’t have any depth to the squad.

I don’t know what Bielsa could have really learned from that. The only positive was Cooper getting 45 minutes under his belt. Maybe we will see Dallas and Ayling back into the wing back positions.

It was a disgrace really, we had enough quality on the pitch to win that, we had fringe players not stepping up, we had established players taking it too lightly and it’s a good job we know what Bielsa is really capable of because selection, formation and substitutions were amongst the worst I’ve seen in 15 years, I thought Hockaday had taken over for a moment.

Shots on target, we had two, that’s how bad it was

 

Good morning,

Firstly, nobody had a good game, including the senior players. It goes to show how much we rely on the likes of Ayling, Dallas, Klich and Bamford to anchor us and allow Raphina, Hernandez, Harrison et al to add a bit of flair. Experimenting with Phillips at the back and Struijk in midfield didn't work. The less said about Kiko the better but lets hope that was his last game for us. The subs were naive. If we were going to give Cooper and Struijk 45 minutes each then it should've been in different halves so that we always had an experienced CB on.

On the youngsters, I think we're sometimes getting a bit too excited over them, especially online where i've seen people insist that X, Y or Z would do better against Man City than whichever senior player happened to have a bad game. (Remember when the same people insisted Zak Thomson and Chris Dawson were ready for the Championship)

Yes we have some of the best young players in the country but only a few will make it at the top level, more will probably end up at Crawley's level than the Premier League. We have to find the best of the best and slowly nurture them into the team.

I could take losing 1-0 to a flukey goal but being dominated in the 2nd half was embarrassing. We need a win at Brighton to get that loss off our back.

 

I have to put yesterday down to Bielsa and only him. Firstly he tried to respect the FA Cup by fielding mainly first teamers, but had them all out of position playing a system never played in a match before. He selected Kiko who to be fair looked solid in the first half pulling off one worldy and at least another good save. I was thinking great. The only threat seemed to come from Ridrigo who was trying his best but getting no service so tried a couple of long rangers. Povida was looking great and Costa also looked dangerous but we had no midfield, we were trying to attack the flanks but left exposed in the middle with ghis strange set-up. Anyway half time comes and you knew Bielsa needed to get a grip of them.

Jeez what did he do as he took off our CB partnership of Cooper and Struijk as well as our main threat.jack Jenkins is a decent baller but left exposed alongside Ollie Casey who was thrown to the wolves. Jenkins is a decent holding DM in the Phillips mould but battered daft yesterday. It was shambolic and embarrassing and every non Leeds fan were peeing themselves. Not worth talking about it anymore.

Bielsa knows he first priority is to stay in the Prem so should have selected a team that plays exactly the same as we play in league matches. There would still have been first team players on the pitch. Meslier, Poveda, Costa, Phillips, Struijk, Alioski playing with Cresswell and Casey and Greenwood and Gelhardt. That team would have done the job playing in the style of our usual league games. We would have been too fast and slick going forward and sold at the back. If it went wrong we could have had a strong bench. But yesterdays total screw up saw a style, tactics never done before and a mish mash team which were nothing. I have seen better organised Sunday league teams. Never thought I would say that about a Bielsa team. He tried to please the media instead of the fans and it backfired terrible

 

Morning all,

On paper that starting 11 should have been strong enough to beat Crawley. A good mix of first teamers, fringe starting 11 and a couple of youngsters looked like we were taking it seriously.

However it looked like they had never met and most were just not up to the task against a very well organised team.

We never got our flowing football going and were pinging balls forward willy nilly and not reaching anyone in a white shirt.

A few individual players I want to comment on-

Pablo- If I rewatched that 90 minutes back I think I would be hard pressed to find one forward pass that found a white shirt.

Costa- Has he had a stroke since the start of the season and no one has noticed?

Poveda- I thought he did ok and cannot understand why he was subbed and Costa wasn't.

Kiko- I can't actually put into words how bad he is and how much he needs to get out of our club. The club needs to sign a new goalkeeper this month as back p. Imagine if Meslier got injured and we had to play that clown in the Premier League?

Bielsa- Got everything wrong yesterday. Starting Kiko, the subs at half time, playing Phillips in defence and Struijk in midfield? For the first time he deserves every criticism aimed at him.

 

Just a few thoughts, Kiko should have saved the first goal, I won't even comment on the second one. Rodrigo should have had a penalty in the first half, VAR would have given it. The substitutions at half time were strange beyond belief. And to top it all off, the absolute cheek of Crawley to put on a reality start from Towie at the end of the game, talk about sticking 2 fingers up to Bielsa. I would have said good luck to them until that happened.

 

In my opionion, the one player we really missed was not Bamford, it was Ayling.

 

Still, too many square pegs in round holes

 

Kiko gave them a two goal head start but come the second half we could have played another 90 minutes and we’d never have scored. Everything was wrong about yesterday’s game and the total blame should be on Bielsa. I wouldn’t have selected Kiko, I wouldn’t have started the second half with no strikers, I wouldn’t have played so many out of position. For someone so great it was very strange... If Ayling had been selected the way it was yesterday we’d have seen him in the attacking midfield role.

We’ve no chance of top 6 we don’t expect relegation, just a little more respect to the cup would have been nice. It’s wrong to believe we can’t stay up and have a decent cup run, it doesn’t have to be one or the other. We play 8 less games in the PL than the Championship

 

Adam Pope
@apopey

I’ve been consistent in saying that in my humble opinion he (Casilla) is not of good enough quality to push for a 1st team place. Need a better keeper as back up.

 

Two things about the potential penalty-

1- You are right VAR would have given it. Since it was introduced I have never been able to get my head round the fact that it is used in some games and not in others. Surely this has given some teams an unfair advantage. I'm not saying it would have won us the game but 1-0 up is a very different place to be in. If all cant have VAR in the cup then none should.

2- The commentators saying "we'll put it down as a coming together then." No, call it what it was, a foul. Yes Rodrigo went down rather easily but he was still clearly pulled back in the replays. Another showing of very poor punditry.



On Crawley. In many ways I would like to give them credit for their victory but certain things have stained them in my mind and they come across as a horrible little club in my opinion. A lot of that is to do with the manager.

He comes across as a poor mans Chris Wilder with very little class. Saying before the game that he would expect mighty Leeds to give up their share of the money to help out little Crawley. Chances are the club would have done without prompting but it is a classless move trying to guilt Leeds into doing it.

In interviews from previous games he just comes across like an arsehole who just wants to pick a fight with whoever is interviewing him. He responded bullishly in the pre match when he was asked how good it was to have their top scorer back from injury. Twat.


And finally the whole Mark Wright thing. They can deny it all they want but if him being at the club is anything other than a publicity stunt then I will eat my hat.

As bad as we were yesterday credit needs to go to the 11 Crawley players who started and the subs who actually came on and affected the game. Unfortunately no one is talking about them because Wright came on in the death for the cameras. How would you feel if you were in that squad?

I have an American friend who has just messaged me to say "I just heard on radio1 that Leeds lost to a TOWIE star, is that right?" Not lost to a league 2 side. Not lost to Crawlley but lost to a TOWIE star. That is utter bullshit and for that I hope Crawley get relegated in the league.

 

Just been listening to the Square Ball podcast and those boys made a good point about Kiko the Clown. They noticed halfway through the first half that the defence were not passing to him. Balls, which when under pressure, would normally go back to Meslier saw Cooper and the others trying harder balls to try and avoid passing to the clown. When a defence has so little belief in a goalie then the game is over before we start.

 

Hello everyone (i'm not going to say good morning cause it ain't)
I mentioned my mate yesterday, and one thing he did mention in our chat after the game, that he had never seen a team (especially a premiership team) all running around like headless chickens, without a clue with what they were doing, as there seemed to be no guidance at all, on or off the pitch. I did mention our captain was off & a lot of experimentation going on.

But even he was as shocked as the rest of us how poor we were, because as he also said, one thing about Leeds which he has admired about us this season is our never say die attitude.

As it was the whole bloody game was an embarrassment (and we have had some in the past), of the likes which I never thought I would see again under Bielsa’s guidance.

 

Say it as you see it and this is what I saw
A bunch of lightweights running around like headless chickens scared to tackle in case they picked up a injury
No coordination whatsoever
I don’t think Crawley were that good it’s just that we were such a load of rubbish made them look better than they were
That’s life move on to Brighton ???

 

Funny (or not) you mentioned or your mate did headless chickens that was my impression as well, we can’t both be wrong

 

Great minds and all that and posted at the same time.

 

Telepathy

 

Well at least we can concentrate on the League

 

That’s the priority and quite right too
Survival is the name of the game
Just ask the Sheffield Utd fans

 

I wouldn't lower myself, but I get your point.