When the refereeing is this stacked against us, we are always going to be struggling. But to then be soooooo bad defensively, worse even than under Farke and yet offering nothing going forward? We deserve to be relegated. Shouldn’t have sacked Farke.
You say that, and I don’t wholly disagree, but our preferred starting line up injuries permitting would probably be something like Krul, Aarons, Hanley, Gibson, Williams, Gilmour, Normann, McClean, Rashica, Pukki Of those, the new ones are Williams, Gilmour, Normann and Rashica - and they’ve probably been our best players (Gilmour excluded). We have been stitched up by a messy pre-season, a poorly timed manager change in retrospect (after a victory??) and badly timed injuries. We never had enough cash to spend, so we need a bit of luck and the old lady has completely deserted us. Spent it all last season I suspect. The thing I don’t understand about Farke’s sacking is not so much that he was sacked, but the timing of it when the board must have known they had no money to spend in January. It would have been much better to have kept Farke, got through until about now and appointed Smith to try to give a last ten games survival bid.
It was a really an exciting game (for the neutrals). You're more than welcome to come over to our match thread. https://www.not606.com/threads/leeds-utd-v-norwich-city-match-thread.399445/page-18 There are quite a few decisions to be debated!
People might make excuses about Smith and the team defensively, but bear in mind we lost to Southampton 2-0, completely outplayed, and they have since been beaten by Newcastle, Villa and now Watford. Leeds had conceded 16 goals in a row without reply, then manage two against us in 90 minutes. Brentford score three against us, having only scored three across their previous seven matches.
With the existing squad Gilmour, Williams, Kabak and Normann are likely to leave. So, from the newcomers PML, Sargeant, Rachica, Tzolis and Gunn are likely to stay. Pukki is our only striker of note with Idah injured for the rest of the season. I have a fear that Rachica might be tempted to leave if an EPL club show interest. The same might be said for Aarons. Can’t see Cantwell coming back especially if Bournemouth are promoted. A decent striker is our first need although some might argue that Idah will be good enough for Championship. If the owners will not seriously invest in a squad that can finish at least 17th in the EPL then why bother winning promotion. Goals scored 18 conceded 63. Says it all. See you next August.
It was widely accepted that our problem was that we weren't physical enough, we couldn't cope with the physicality of this league. So we bought a load of players based on their physical attributes as seen on a spreadsheet: e.g. Sargent for his ability to run at full speed for 90 minutes, Placheta for his speed when measured against a stop-watch, Normann because he looks good in a sauna shot. What we seem to have now is a set of players with very little technical ability, especially in midfield. Seriously, looking at this season, have you recently seen a Norwich side which was so lacking in technical ball skills? In retrospect, I think Farke was wrong to give up his commitment to playing with the ball. The players he developed were all very good on the ball, including defenders. He would make very good players out of Rowe and Tzolis, I'm sure. But that's history now, we've thrown it away, and we have mid-table mediocrity and ugly football to look forward to.
We have until 2nd April to soak up the realisation of relegation until we play Brighton in another nail in the coffin of this horrendous predictable season .
I really can't see what we gained from sacking Farke. At least we would be ready to take The Championship apart again.
With Dean Smith as our slightly modernised version of Pulis or Big Sam, Webber overseeing recruitment, and Delia digging her heels in and saying nothing is going to change? I wouldn't put many hopes on next year.
The final kick in the stones. Nobody cares about Covid-19 any more ffs and we were without our only Premier league quality player because of the China cough n sniffs .
Yes, but we say that with hindsight. We could have bought two 25m players; one of them gets injured, and one is them is a flop. Then everyone would be saying we should have spread the risk. What does seem culpable is that we didn't get any kind of replacement for Skipp, a disciplined DM, when it was so blatantly obvious that we needed this. If we had brought someone in and it didn't work out, fair enough - the luck of the draw. But not even getting a replacement of any kind is a dereliction of duty in my opinion. (And I don't count Normann - he is not a DM, not in his skillset and certainly not psychologically.)
I was rather hoping we would sign a striker. Sitting as we are the lowest scoring team in the top 4 divisions perhaps buying one in January may have given us a boost? Especially as Idah is injured after his haul of 1 goal and Sargent on 2 both against Watford. We should have plundered the youth set up by now , Rowe was one of our best performing players this month and only gets brought on after we are already losing.
