Good Morning. It's Thursday 29th December, and here are the latest headlines from Elland Road City too strong for Marsch's men Festive cheer turned to disappointment after Manchester City eased their way to a 3-1 victory at Elland Road last night. Although it was nothing more than what was expected, it doesn't make it any easier, especially when you're hovering just two points above the drop zone Marsch's men looked well-disciplined for the most part, restricting the Champions of England to half-chances; at least until first half injury time. With only seconds to go before the break, Rodri pounced on a rebound after Meslier had denied Mahrez with a smart diving save to his right. All Leeds hard work had been undone at the worst possible time. City doubled their tally shortly after the break. Koch remained rooted to the spot after Cooper's under-hit pass allowed Grealish time to nip in, and make a beeline for the Leeds penalty area. As Meslier advanced to narrow down the angle, the former Villa ace squared the ball to Haaland for the easiest of tap-ins. Citeh added a third on the hour mark. Grealish linked up well with Haaland, allowing the Norwegian International the space and time he needed to stab the ball home from close range. Leeds never gave up, and finally got on the scoresheet themselves on 73 minutes. Greenwood's sublime corner was met by the head of Struijk, and suddenly Leeds were back in the game. Gelhardt was inches away from adding a second, minutes later but it was not to be. Leeds 1 City 3. please log in to view this image Should Leeds be picking and choosing their battles more carefully Leeds exerted a lot of energy last night. What they lacked in style, they more than made up for in hard work, commitment and pure determination; yet it was never going to be enough, against a City side featuring some of the best players in the World. Our next eight games will define our season. After our visit to St James Park on New Year's Eve, Leeds face West Ham, Aston Villa, Brentford, Nottingham Forest, Manchester United, Everton and Southampton. With a potential 24 points up for grabs, Leeds have a realistic chance of safety if they concentrate on the games that matter. Jesse Marsch would have looked at the League calendar and earmarked the must win matches. Should Leeds be concentrating all their efforts on their next game, or picking and choosing their battles more carefully. There are potentially five, six-pointers from their next eight games where Leeds must pick up points or resign themselves to Championship football next season. Leeds have a relatively small squad, especially when you consider their long term injury worries. Should they be choosing their battles more carefully or giving 100% against which ever team is in front of them; remember, we beat Chelsea and Liverpool this term!!! please log in to view this image
Morning all If Jesse was picking his battles carefully we wouldn’t have beat Chelsea or Liverpool and we’d be 6 points worse off on 9 points three adrift and rock bottom. Last season and the one before the Board allowed Bielsa total say in transfers, the idea of a DOF is to ensure fluidity when a new man comes in. I understand why they did at the time (give Bielsa total control). Now what do we do, does Orta go out and capture us some players of his choosing or do we allow Jesse to suggest the targets and have the say I also disagree Matt, we didn’t restrict City to half chances, they could and should have been 4-0 up at half time. They can do that to anyone not alone our feeble defence, my concern was we lacked any shape or determination, headless chickens spring to mind. We gave them acres of space, we honestly looked clueless in the first half When the opposition misses so many chances and it looks like it’s going to be 0-0 I just don’t get the we defended resolutely or defended well comments. We didn’t we were fortunate, we defended poorly and gave them too many chances. Yes I expected a defeat, I’m expecting another on Saturday then it really is crunch time. We’ll play a weakened team in the FA Cup as survival is more important I’m definitely not enjoying the football at the moment, we’re just making up PL numbers and the season remit is don’t get relegated. Bielsa stayed a year too long. Radz has stayed two years too long, Jesse a month too long and counting
No problem losing to City. They are on a different level. It's about learning from it. We learnt that none of our defence are PL quality. We need a whole new back 4. Hopefully Gnonto will understand that you can't let the best midfielder in the league in De Bruyne just drift past you in to space. (3rd goal). Nothing new. Just the same old faces making the same old mistakes and being rewarded with new contracts. I'm a bit sick of it tbh. Llorente, Koch, Cooper are the worst culprits and the club should move heaven and earth to move these on before we end up back in the Championship.
@ristac. I thought our shape looked OK 1st half. We were compact, moved as a unit, chose our moments to close down avenues. City will just play through anyone at times no matter how organised they are. I'll say again that the defence, as individuals, are nowhere near good enough for this level and that is why we are opened up so easily. How would you organise last night's players against City?
Morning all did we miss Adams of course we did and buy a left back and replace the groper Cooper improves us no end. All we can hope for this window is a left back. Rads does not have the money for top class players who are now signing for clubs higher up the table. We will continue to take punts on players like Gnonto and rightly so. Harrison now is benched and Newcastle are rumoured to be in for Maddison. We may well get stuck with him and lose money moving him on. Someone in my view has told him he is a better player than he actually is.
Morning all, I thought we kept the shape well mostly, worked hard against a much better team and showed why the other teams around us should be as worried if not more about going down. Terrible defending aside for the goals I think the thing that annoyed me the most was sloppy passing when trying to play forward. All the good work of stopping their attack and winning the ball undone by poor pass after poor pass giving it straight back and once again under pressure. The difference in quality showed right there.
Adams a huge loss, Meslier inspired to keep the score down to respectable levels.so many on social media who clearly believed were a match for city. Reality check. We don’t have one player who’d likely get in their match day squad. That’s the reality and philips inability to get a game with them is proof. Cooper and for Shaw are done and never were pl standard. Onto the important work in the summer. Bamfords, klick, forShaw, cooper, firpo, Dallas all need replacing. That’s likely a minimum net spend of 120m and I don’t mean sell Adam’s and Meslier to part fund it. Proper investment required for once. The other option is to carry on with this nonsense until we’re eventually relegated anywat
I really wanted this season to be better than last. All I see is a clueless / out of his depth manager with a mostly championship side of players excluding the obvious new additions and our keeper. We need to upgrade the team and get rid of all the Championship level players. Trouble is, it will cost a **** load of money to do this, and I doubt that will happen. Best we can hope for is a Left Back, and that's it. Yesterdays game should have been a rugby score from what I observed. They were shocking and like many of you have said, and couldn't string a few passes together, let alone a shot! Its a good job City's finishing wasn't up to their usual standards, otherwise we'd have been dead and buried by half time. Time for change of manager asap. The trouble is, I really don't know who would/could replace Ted. Not in the mindset of Dyche though, nor big Sam!
What people forget is that we played Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal off the park and everyone praised Marsch for those performances. Choose our matches, what crap and on top of that Marsch has had 6 weeks to put a plan together and failed badly last night. Brentford can stop City but Leeds can’t? Ristac is right we could have been 4 or 5 down at half time, is that really containing City, Meslier kept us in the game up to half time and Marsch did nothing. In his interview he even said we stepped up and we’re brave in the 2nd half and wish we had done that from the start. Right there he admits he didn’t do anything until it was too late. We didnt start pressing until the 70th minute and guess what we were winning the ball, turning them over, got onto the front foot, attacked their defence which struggled trying to contain us. They were allowed to dominate that game because of our tactics and they had 70% possession and took 26 shots at our goal. We had 1 shot in the first half and 5 more from the 70th minute. Franks had Brentford pressing them to death and got a result, we a so called pressing team didnt press and made them look good and fk knows what those substitutions were meant to do, only Gelhardt increased the pressure on them as we brought on defenders and midfielders? And one more thing, why the fk are we giving long contracts to Koch, Llorente and Struijk if our defence is crap, what the hell are we doing. There will be some who try and stick up for Marsch but last nights tactics were wrong whatever you say and I hope he can get it sorted for the next 8 games because if he fails we are going down
You play to your strengths and we didn't. we played like scared cats the first half. We were very defence minded let city have the ball and said break us down in which like most good teams eventually will. That's not our game or the way we play the 2nd half was us that's how we play football and we made some sort of fist of it. Yes City are quality but we gave them to much respect that first half. seemed to me we were playing for a 0-0 and trying to snatch anything that comes our way on a counter. at times city had their whole team in our half with 2 CB'S hugging the centre circle. That's how much they forced us back or what we gave them to play with. either way it was a training game first half. An attacking unit V an Defensive unit. Look we weren't expected to win and we were soundly beaten by a very good team. I want to slag them off but have to remember who we played and how much better they are than us. we had to try something i guess. One thing it does show though how far we actually are behind them. we maybe are in the same league but are light miles apart.
How would I? I am not a coach of a PL football team, I watch the game and wait to see how each team is set out. I watch with interest what a coach does to outsmart the other. I watch what is being attempted and if it is failing miserably I watch to see what changes that coach makes. I watched yesterdays game and either Jesse is a genius as nobody could work out what the game plan was, or he was useless. Agree about the defence though
I think they stepped off the gas at 3-0 so our little cameo in the last twenty minutes was all a bit late and probably not as a result of us suddenly forcing the game to be honest.
Morning all Last night was the first game I'd managed to watch since the Everton game. Yes I get we played a team who was lightyears ahead of us in talent but there was a lot to be concerned about. That back 4 is shocking. The fact City could have wiped the floor with us by halftime but Grealish couldn't score in a brothel was a god send. Why was Cooper and Koch ball watching for one of the goals? I saw that team sheet and my first thought was we need a new midfielder even if we don't sell Klich and Forshaw. There needs to be a massive investment when the window opens on Sunday. I count at least 4 signings that we need. A LB, CB, CM and a ST with an extra 2 if we do sell Klich and Forshaw which looks likely. On Marsch being up for the job... He maybe not our greatest manager of all time but jeez he's been left with a lot of dross to manage. You need to remember that a lot of this squad was brought in by different managers when we were in the championship as well as the dross that Orta/Bielsa brought in during his 4 year stint at the club. It takes time to build a squad and Marsch has only had 1 window to make signings.
Regarding the dross comment. I felt we would be relegated from the Championship the day Bielsa took over. We had previously looked an average Championship team and here we were employing a guy with Zero experience of English football who needed an interpreter, a recipe for disaster but then fast forward to Stoke and Derby, I was in shock. Bielsa worked wonders with what he had, his weakness was signing players, it bewildered me how he could make such a vast improvement to the players he inherited yet give him the cheque book and the players went downhill A good coach will work with what he has and change the ones out he has no use for. Jesse has brought in 7 new players if you count Robles, Aaronson, Roca and Kristensen were equally as poor as anyone yesterday, Gnonto looks promising but Joffy looked better, Sinisterra I fear will be another Forshaw just plagued with injury (I hope not). When we introduced Klich and Ayling we looked a bit better. Bottom line is if Jesse knew what he was doing he would play to the teams strength of what he has available. Jesse was still guilty of playing James as a striker, he felt a new RB was more important than a new LB and he has ruined Harrison out on the right. I'd assume Jesse is also the one that said to Orta yes give these CB's new contracts I have plans for them
Why so much negativity? Phillips grinning from ear to ear when the Leeds fans started chanting “you fat bastard” was worth the entrance fee on it’s own Morning all
Actually, I think I will have a go at negative, All of our players are rubbish and should be stoned in public. Who gave Vic a chequebook? The guy knows less than your average poster on here about available players that would want to play for and would improve us. And don’t even get me started on Rads. I can’t decide between exportation or prison for what amounts to daylight robbery. How this guy has fleeced money out of every Leeds fan around the world, not spent a dime of his own and chanced his way into the Premier League is beyond me. Shows how awful Bates, the skint Arabs and the coked up Italian really were
I'm repeating what I said when we lost to Preston. Bielsa is an average coach at best. His reputation over shadows his actual job ability. He never lasts long in a top European league. Let's put it out here apart from Raph. Bielsa signed ****. Firpo and Rodders being the prime examples but that honour got put on to Orta. He didn't sign players last Jan and it cost us. Yeah a good coach works with what he has but Marsch has got an aging squad and crap players. Yes he signed 7 players. 4 or 5 players were there to bolster a very thin MF while 2 of them were to replace Phillips and Raph. I'd give him a bit more time before judging him.
KP was given a great ovation from all four sides of the ground after the final whistle so think he'll be back one day. Particularly liked the "you're too fat to play for Leeds" chant as well
I said it under Bielsa and I'll say it again today for Marsch. The coach/manager is not the issue at the club. The standard of player needed to consistently perform at this level is required. The players let Bielsa down and the same ones are letting Marsch down. I'm not saying they don't care (although there are a few under Bielsa that should look at themselves) but they just clearly aren't good enough. Would this lot start at any other team in the PL? Firpo Cooper Llorente Koch Klich Forshaw Bamford James Then the players with big question marks over their head. Would they start in any top 10 side? Kristensen Ayling Dramah Klaasen Struijk Greenwood Rodrigo Harrison Gelhardt Doesn't leave us with many does it.
