You might be right fella. I’m genuinely still open-minded. But I do think as fans it’s actually really hard to tell. We’re naturally so results focussed, but in football that’s the one thing no one can ever control. I Read an interesting article not so long ago that said football clubs don’t need managers. Results are down to player ability and ‘form/confidence’ is cyclical. It was actually about new manager bounce - the argument given was that statistically the bounce happened for clubs that didn’t sack the manager as well as those that did. They were just due a break! Clearly there are good and bad managers, but football is almost unique in sport in regards to the regular disconnect between result and performance. You regularly see sides win 5-0 when they only have 5 chances, and fail to score when they have 20. Even the very best strikers miss more than they score. The sides that create more over a season will win more, but for the ‘pack’ anything can happen. We play that Chelsea game 10 more times and we never win 3-0. We play the Brentford game 10 more times and we win more than we lose. This season for us will be decided by pieces of brilliance and errors at both ends of the pitch. Beyond giving a style of play and clear expectations there is only so much a manager can do other than sign better players. I think it’s partly why marsch is so (sometimes annoyingly) upbeat. He needs these guys to have confidence and in that respect he’s right. whether his football philosophy is right? Fck knows
What if the manager/coach tells his defenders that when we're winning a game you alway clear the ball down the touchline and adopt a safety first approach no matter what ? Or that when you're last man on the edge of our box you never go to ground but stay and your feet and make their striker shoot from where he is....mainly because you look a right tit when he's danced around you and you're left sitting on your arse as he smashes it into the net.
If he drops every footballer that makes a mistake, we couldn’t field a team. seriously the first one yesterday - he just gave away a free kick we should have been able to stop. Second one, he looked a clown, but to be fair eze drew him in well. not cooper’s finest day in a Leeds shirt. I said it in here recently I don’t think any of our centre backs are midtable Prem league standard. I’ve been critical of Koch historically but to be fair this year he’s been the pick of the bunch.
The film comes to mind, a bri jammy it’s fkg basics, Cooper is crap end of, get Cresswell back in Jan and put him with Koch, who is our best defender this term by a mile.
He’s operating with a mid table championship sides. Just like the u23 football there’s a huge gulf in standard. Can he make the big step up. Hope so. Defence needs serious strengthening
Said this before about cresswell. Really like him, thought he looked class act in the 23s. Not many 20 year old centre halves burst into first team football though - and although some fans liked his no-nonsense physical approach, I thought he looked out of his depth when he did step up for us. Still he helped us stay up by fckng up in the play that got Jimenez sent off at wolves. Hopefully his time will come… don’t think it’s now though.
Cresswell isn't as good as many on here seem to think he is and I'm really not sure where all the hype comes from. Charlie has only started one match for the first team and we got beat 2-1 so everthing else apart from the odd cameo substitute appearance is based on U21/23's football.
I always said we would never qualify for Europe under Bielsa. A mix of Bielsa and Jesse might be just what we need, my post or comment wasn't meant to be a Bielsa vs Jesse moment
Maybe when the lad actually plays we can have an opinion. probably a dozen teams in that bracket, just hoping to scrape enough points to stay up.
