Nail On Head.

[Cjay]

A piece in The Telegraph today has basically said everything for me, dont know if anyone has read it but its very accurate.

Lots of bits in it that fans have highlighted through out the season, pleased that the media have picked up on this as well.

Also the quote from Bielsa offers great hope and proves he isnt blind or overly stubborn, he just has tried to do the best he can with the limited tools he has available.


Forgive me for the break with convention by not beginning this inquest of where Leeds United have gone wrong with a line from a Smiths song. It can be comforting to embrace despair and the sense that the world is engaged in a conspiracy against a club, especially after the staggering failure of referee Keith Stroud to award them an obvious early penalty against Brentford. Yet the reasons why Leeds are now all but certain of missing out on automatic promotion after back-to-back defeats are more prosaic and what begins with Morrissey tends to end up in a hunt for scapegoats.

Marcelo Bielsa, even through the prophylactic of an interpreter, inspires an emotional devotion but he is a deeply practical and candid man. Knee-jerk reaction to defeat typically identifies the usual suspects, the absence of industry and bottle. On Monday night the manager addressed this, saying: “Of course the team has limits but that has nothing to do with any mental aspect. I would almost say the opposite. This team has hidden many limits with a huge effort.”

He is right. They are not falling apart. Every single outfield player he inherited from a team that finished 13th last year and won only four of 22 games after Boxing Day has been significantly and conspicuously improved by the coaching of Bielsa and his staff. Eight of them started at Griffin Park and for most of the campaign it has been nine – only Barry Douglas and Jack Harrison of the summer signings have played more than half the games and Douglas, the left-back bought from Wolves, has suffered four injuries, three medium-term and one season-ending.

Bielsa has made some of his charges, who looked frankly League One standard last year, into decent Championship players and transformed mid-table Championship ones into top-three quality. He has a Rolls Royce system without Rolls Royce parts and that has entailed every one of them playing at the very extremities of their impressively enhanced stamina and capability to reach this far. It is not heart that they lack but at times their collective and individual composure, concentration and class have been found wanting.

It is not easy to establish such domination of possession – 63 per cent v Brentford, 77 per cent v Wigan, 73 per cent v Birmingham, 69 per cent against Millwall and 71 per cent against Sheffield United. And it is far from sterile, they used it to have 18 shots against Brentford, 36 against Wigan, 28 against Sheffield Wednesday and 17 against United.

Errors have been made because they are trying to force their way through packed defences having found ways round them or over them blocked. Short of signing Urban Cookie Collective to find the key, the secret, instead they have found themselves stymied. For the first goal Patrick Bamford scored against West Brom in March to put Leeds 2-0 up, he took an extra, seemingly superfluous, touch with his left foot to pull the keeper even wider before shooting. It was testament to his vision, nerve and control that he executed it perfectly.

Yet against Reading at the Madejski, when Leeds were 3-0 up, he missed a hatful of chances by snatching at shots and misjudging his angles. It was a game for Leeds to nibble away at the superior goal difference of Norwich and Sheffield United but they could not find the clinical dispassion to convert the chances they strived so hard to create. This past month, he and some of his colleagues in the box have been undone by the extra touch.

The sin of over-elaboration does not betray laziness or arrogance, a desire to walk the ball into the net, but hesitancy and doubt. The only teams they have comprehensively whacked, Norwich away, Derby twice, West Brom at home, Reading away, have given them space. Everyone else has restricted it with defence and midfield working in compact synergy and then hitting Leeds on the break.

If a team cannot find the efficiency up front, it needs supreme concentration at the back and too often a positional lapse or a picked-off pass – Sheffield United’s winner, Birmingham City’s, both Wigan’s and Brentford’s - have proved their undoing. This is what you get if you play Bielsa’s way without consistent precision, a good side but one that is also flawed.

The terrible conversion rate has blighted their chances more than the injury epidemic that last night claimed Gjanni Alioski. Leeds United lead the charts for chances created – 577 – but are only fifth in the table of goals scored, behind the two teams above them and West Brom and Aston Villa, the two below them. As well as trying to dribble and pass their way to goal once inside the box without the incisiveness such difficult work demands, they shot with abandon but scored just twice from 82 efforts in their last three matches against Brentford, Wigan and Wednesday, a conversion rate of 2.5 per cent.

Some of the chances they have missed have almost beggared belief, Bamford in particular guilty of missing sitters with his head and then redeeming himself with sensational strikes. That’s what £7 million buys you in this market, talent with pitfalls.

In January they had a chance to deepen the squad during the transfer window and bought the goalkeeper Kiko Casilla and thought they had agreed a loan deal to sign Swansea’s flying Daniel James with a proper transfer guaranteed in the summer. Swansea backed out at the 11th hour after James had agreed terms, passed his medical and been photographed in his new strip but one cannot help thinking that the structure of the deal – presumably dictated by cashflow – gave Swansea the opportunity to reclaim him. If James was the one outfield player Bielsa wanted to enhance Leeds United’s promotion chances and Swansea were willing to sell, could not the money have been found to push it through?

The breakdown of that transfer is one reason why comparisons with their last successful promotion campaign from this level, in 1989-90, have been wide of the mark. Howard Wilkinson was not just given the funds to sign Gordon Strachan from Manchester United in March 1989, he also bought Chris Fairclough from Tottenham. In the summer he signed Liverpool’s Jim Beglin, Vinnie Jones from Wimbledon and Mel Sterland from Scottish champions, Rangers.

In January when his attack was misfiring he went out and purchased Lee Chapman from Nottingham Forest. They were all top-flight players and he did not stint in taking others off his second division rivals – notably John Hendrie and Chris Kamara – who made vital contributions. Leeds United are no longer able to afford such a transfusion of skill and nous but James, whose value has rocketed since January, must have been attainable.

There is no need for the sackcloth and ashes yet though this author’s experience at play-off finals in 1987, 2006 and 2008 compel me to keep them close at hand. Some on social media have pointed out Leeds fans’ hubris when their automatic promotion fate was in the club’s own hands, but they cannot all be Dougal Mcguires with ‘Careful Now’ banners. Football fans are going to revel in their moments on top, even prematurely, often oblivious to the shakiness of the ground on which they stand.

Leeds United are third in the table and have been engaged in the most enjoyable season they have had for years, Easter’s events notwithstanding. It is perfectly possible for a season to contrive to be both a triumph and a disappointment simultaneously. And maybe that will be its epitaph. But Leeds still have just under five weeks to tilt the balance firmly towards the former.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/20 ... pointment/

[mothbanquet]

It's been nice being in the papers for the right reasons again. ALAW!

[weasel]

Points out the bleeding obvious - shot conversion. Not only are we not converting but so many of our shots are off target which is mind boggling given that we tend to try to walk the ball in rather than just having long range shots.

The article lets itself down by making comparison's to Wilko being able to sign players from the top flight. It simply isn't practical to match premiership wages these days. Back then the gap in wages wasn't the huge chasm it is now. Even a fringe player at Man U (for example a modern day Strachan) would probably be on £50k to £100k per week - I doubt our top earner is even on £20k per week.

So all in all sh*t article although correct about us being sh*t at shooting as a squad - but I doubt anyone wasn't aware of that.

[Cjay]

Tbf i think the point of the comparison was investment in key areas the squad was lacking in, which is something we didnt do again last January. The points about the squad are valid, it was last season a mid table squad and for a long time a relegation level squad, cant forget that, we play a high class style of football with average players.

Moreover i hope the board realise all this.

[Irish Ian]

Points out the bleeding obvious - shot conversion. Not only are we not converting but so many of our shots are off target which is mind boggling given that we tend to try to walk the ball in rather than just having long range shots.

The article lets itself down by making comparison's to Wilko being able to sign players from the top flight. It simply isn't practical to match premiership wages these days. Back then the gap in wages wasn't the huge chasm it is now. Even a fringe player at Man U (for example a modern day Strachan) would probably be on £50k to £100k per week - I doubt our top earner is even on £20k per week.

So all in all sh*t article although correct about us being sh*t at shooting as a squad - but I doubt anyone wasn't aware of that.

I think you might have been reading through the red mist Weasel.


requote :


"The breakdown of that transfer is one reason why comparisons with their last successful promotion campaign from this level, in 1989-90, have been WIDE OF THE MARK."

Just saying

[weasel]

Don't get me wrong the injection of pace that Dan James would have brought could have been the difference I am just saying that we can't really go out and sign Premiership players and compete with premiership wages like we did with Wilko.

[1964white]

Don't get me wrong the injection of pace that Dan James would have brought could have been the difference I am just saying that we can't really go out and sign Premiership players and compete with premiership wages like we did with Wilko.

No chance these days