Leeds Utd v Aston Villa Match Thread

We still have room for 3 loan players so hopefully we are trying to tie some down now. We also have players we are not using so should move them on. Hopefully Harrison will not be needed any more as he’s been crap every game, Bornouw wishes he had not come, Meslier must be sold even if for pennies

 

I would add £18m for Longstaffe in there as he has ad more crap games than good

 

I was pretty vocal about each one of those signings not being better than what we had at the time. I was shot down rather quickly.

Think it was along the lines of Bijol being a more expensive Charlie Cresswell. Perri not much better than Meslier. Didn't want Justin because of his injuries and his lack of form/attributes since them.

Think I was okay with Bornauw as an improvement on Debayo and a bit of a free hit.

 

Longstaff has been decent. He's not eye catching but he gets through the graft. He drags people along with him too. Seems a bit of a leader out there. Don't think he was £18 million either. Thought it was £12 million plus £3 million if we stay up.

 

Given that not many of them can either get or hold down a first team place adds weight to you being completely correct.

 

Had we simply stuck with last seasons team we wouldn’t be much worse off. Should have invested heavily in the forward end of things

 

no and yes

we’re competitive in every game and we have chances to win, the players are giving their all still

not been discussed much but the dcl handball when it was harder not to score. An everton fan friend of mine described him as the unluckiest striker he'd ever seen... finding new and innovative ways to avoid getting the ball in the back of the net

At the other end, talent though he is, give Roger’s the free kick and the goal chance again in another game and he likely doesn’t score either of them. Thats why some teams are at the bottom and some are midtable. Fine margins. Better to be lucky than good.

likelihood is though with our run of games coming up, we're going to be on a long barren run and probably a few points adrift... and once confidence goes, performances will likely follow - tough gig being an optimist at the moment

 

Lewis Deighton is an idiotic cry baby, always seeking attention

 

Oh no

 

Stach, Longstaff and our LB missing from that, Farke signed these players, he spent the budget as he felt necessary.

Last season you praised him for the likes of Gruev and Tanaka, so signings this season are on him. Let’s also remember Farke had been chasing Bornauw for 6 months, we got him cheap due to his contract, why chase him for 6 months and not play him.

If he is not good enough, why sign him, Wober would have been better than Bijol, Farke can’t forgive Wober yet he can Harrison

Farke shipped out a few players on the cheap, Wober and Ramazani, Schmidt another, he got rid of Cresswell who is better than Bijol, he got rid of Joseph who is no worse than DCL

If a player can have his limit and we can say he is a championship player then so can a coach. Farkes level is championsip, just like Warnock and a ton of others

 

My opinion what it's worth is Farke has proven that his adaptation to the Premiership has never worked. He is process driven instead of taking a game by game approach which newly promoted sides have to take because of the inevitable disparity in player quality. He has made changes to the way we play but he takes the same approach against Arsenal as we do against Wolves so if you're the opposition manager you know exactly what you're going to get. Works in the Championship where he has always had a significant advantage in terms of player quality but the play off final in 2023/24 showed his weakness to adapt to a 'cup final' type game. (That was the disaster for Leeds, not going up that season and not keeping the players that we had to sell and building upon them.)

It's Farke out for me and has been for a long time but I don't see this squad under any manager having the ability to stay up, it's just not good enough. So whether he's sacked or not in my opinion is irrelevant. I don't think any of the signings have shown so far that they are an upgrade on what we had, we wasted money, who had the final say, none of us know.

 

I remember, I also remember hoping you were wrong, I also remember defending the signings. However, the signings are on Farke, along with all the other points you have made about reacting too slow you know deep down he needs to go so I don’t quite understand the reluctance not to just come out and say, he isn’t a PL coach

 

He can answer for himself, and i'm offering unsolicited comment but i get the sense Emu sees the world in shades of grey not black and white.

Football managers strengths are often also their weaknesses. Farke has a preferred style of play, like Bielsa did. Neither vary much from their core beliefs. Farke's brand of football has kept us competitive in games against far better squads. Howe and Slot are having much worse seasons relatively.

I'm sure Farke did sign off on the signings... but then i'm sure he'd have picked different players if we had a bigger budget. Genuinely, I think if Farke managed villa and emery managed leeds, villa would likely still have won today. When the game slowed down, as they do, their better individual quality started to show. But we still more than held our own by pressing high and forcing errors. Do people ever ask why these better squads with apparently much better managers aren't wiping the floor with us every week? Surely they should be. With a different manager they might.

Emu and I were on the same page re Marsch. It's possible to not love a manager's football, to see some obvious weaknesses but still see some positive attributes, to recognise that maybe we played well but lacked the quality and a bit of luck to get the result. What some see as apologist, I see as balanced.

I don't mind if Farke goes, providing we have a quality replacement lined up. I'm a leeds fan not a manager fan. I just think the grass isn't always greener and expectations aren't realistic.

 

As Milky says. Its not black and white with me.

To be clear, I think Farke gets more stuff right than wrong. I like his system although I'd play slightly different personnel. I'd like to play a bit more directly. I don't mean long ball but if a wide man has the opportunity to take on his full back then he should. I think filling your team with 6ft plus players and then playing short corners is idiotic. I think with the high intensity we play at that the fresh legs should come on 10-15 minutes sooner.

However, the players are running and fighting for him and thats a huge positive. We aren't getting outplayed that often on the whole. We've not been lucky at either end. Individual PLAYER errors have cost us lots of points. I think the referees have gone against us for the most part.

There's alot to like. There's also bits that I don't like. I'm a bit of a glass half empty kind of guy when it comes to football. Maybe it's because I played alot when I was younger and I always looked to improve my weak points rather than pat myself on the back about my strong points. I tend to focus on the bad bits more than the good bits because improvement is the only way to get better.

 

Just watched emery give a balanced view on the game, thought our work rate was great in the first half and we stifled them, then they came into it when the pace dropped off and they had more time on the ball... also thought they got their goals at the right time.

Farke meanwhile has questioned us switching off for the first goal and referenced some frustration that we're conceding too many goals down our left hand side.