A Successful Season?

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Cjay
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A Successful Season?

Post by Cjay »

So, was last season a successful season?

Lets look at the positives.

We appointed a world renowned manager who clearly was humbled and honoured to be here.

This manager attracted great media interest to us both in England and around the world.

We played a brand of football that you usually only see in the top leagues with the top players.

We saw plenty of potential future stars give a chance, Clarke, Shacks, Halme, Davis etc.

We saw improvement in many of our players, many of whom frankly didn't seem to have it in them before, Ayling, Phillips, Klich, Roofe, Cooper etc.

We achieved our highest points total in nearly 29 years.

We achieved our highest league position since we won promotion from League 1 under Grayson.

The fanbase was united again which pre Bielsa after the last season ended and Hecky left seemed unlikely any time soon.

Leeds for better or worse were genuine box office.

Plenty of positives to be had however, the negatives.

We for the umpteenth time allowed a January window to pass us by.

Despite signing a world renowned manager we didnt seem to back him properly.

We were top at Christmas and became only the 2nd team in Championship history to not go up automatically.

With 4 games to go we were 3rd playing the worst away side at Elland Road, we lost.

We had the chances to kill off the playoff semi final in the first leg, we failed and paid for it.

It seems that despite insisting lessons had been learned the clubs recruitment policy wont change and will be more hope then ambition, additionally we will weaken with sales before trying to replace.

Finally and most depressingly.

We are a laughing stock again.

I havent seen this much Leeds bashing for a while, opposition fans are revelling in our failure and tbh we cant blame them.

Marcelo Bielsa also said that without promotion this season would be a failure, maybe a bit dramatic but ultimately i suppose Promotion is what counts in the end.

It was a great season that turned into an incredibly painful and frustrating one.

So successful season or not?

Or is it that we wont be able to judge last season until the end of next season?

After all if this season laid the foundations for a successful season next season then by that measure it was successful?

Made no secret of my frustration with Radz, i find his transfer policy frustratingly limiting and feel he is largely to blame for us being a laughing stock now.

On the flip side he is partially responsible for all the positives.

But do the positives outweigh the negatives of last season?
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hector
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Re: A Successful Season?

Post by hector »

A Successful Season?

Yes :)
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Re: A Successful Season?

Post by 1964white »

A decent season Cjay, some of the best football we've witnessed for decades.

Successful ? a big fat NO as we failed miserably in the end, we lost the majority of important matches when the pressure was on, we even contrived to beat ourselves on far too many occasions to poor teams because we had no leaders on the pitch, no game-changers on the bench plus our players are inconsistent types who continually make the same errors, also haven't enough winning mentality.

We need to toughen up, have more quality/pace in the squad & be more clinical & decisive all over the park
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Re: A Successful Season?

Post by SG90 »

In some ways, yes. Improving the players we already had here, youngsters coming into the fold, a United fanbase with no toxicity at the club anymore.

But probably no. Top for so much of the season, top 2 95% of season, spent the entire season in the top 4, comfortably better than the rest of the top 6, but still don't go up. That is failure and who knows what will happen next year?

We all said this would happen if we didn't get two outfield players in January, but Radz thought he could gamble and do it on the cheap as per usual. He is to blame.
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Re: A Successful Season?

Post by Irish Ian »

1964white wrote: Fri May 24, 2019 10:22 am A decent season Cjay, some of the best football we've witnessed for decades.

, we lost the majority of important matches when the pressure was on, we even contrived to beat ourselves on far too many occasions to poor teams because we had no leaders on the pitch, no game-changers on the bench plus our players are inconsistent types who continually make the same errors, also haven't enough winning mentality.

We need to toughen up, have more quality/pace in the squad & be more clinical & decisive all over the park
This should be on a banner in the Leeds dressing room.

I have been slowly looking back at match highlights from this season.

Away to Forest summed it up for me:

Their first goal. Caught on the break and Jansson caught on his wrong foot --- Again. 0-1
A player playing out of position makes an error and is red carded
Our best chances falling to defenders
When we go in front we still attack and get caught out instead of taking the heat out of the game.
We couldn't defend set pieces.

We saw these errors time and again throughout the season.

Sorry I dont know how to paste the link into the post

'
"Football is about the people and the players,” he said. “Then there are those who will mingle in the middle: the coaches, executives and journalists. That last group represents the worst part about football" Marcelo Bielsa
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1964white
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Re: A Successful Season?

Post by 1964white »

We lost ten games to ordinary clubs who finished between 9th & 24th in the league.

We failed to beat ten men three times

We missed 75% of our penalties

Our goals/chances conversion rate was the poorest in the championship

And we gifted some of the daftest/craziest goals imaginable

Surely not a sign of a successful team
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Re: A Successful Season?

Post by HarryofOz »

Hmmmmm interesting. It was a very good season as well played well for the most part, and were in the promotion race from the start, to just before the end.

But we did miss out on the main goal of promotion.
Un Marcelo Bielsa, solo hay un Marcelo Bielsa. Gracias Marcello. Marsching on together.
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1964white
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Re: A Successful Season?

Post by 1964white »

SG90 wrote: Fri May 24, 2019 10:24 am We all said this would happen if we didn't get two outfield players in January, but Radz thought he could gamble and do it on the cheap as per usual. He is to blame.
The Yorkshire tight-arse mentality must be ingrained into all of our owners of the football/rugby/cricket clubs around Leeds.

Tbh ask yourselves which of our Yorkshire teams are successful in what is the largest county in the UK, too much cloth cap mentality to be consistently successful

Yorkshire clubs rarely supersede their Lancashire/London counterparts in any sport, if we do it is generally spasmodic :(
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1964white
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Re: A Successful Season?

Post by 1964white »

It was doing my head in when I was reading various club forums, so many were saying we would screw up, even the Man City main site with their topic on Leeds had run over 80 pages last time I viewed it. They were spot on with their assessment of our demise
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Re: A Successful Season?

Post by Chilli D »

You've pretty much covered everything that happened last season Cjay and I honestly don't know which side I fall on.
So many things were a massive improvement on the previous season yet the last four calamitous weeks make it all seem such a failure.
I'd say it was both with the scales tipping slightly towards unsuccessful.
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Re: A Successful Season?

Post by weasel »

Interesting with the Forest match video to draw a comparison between the first goal conceded in that match and in the Derby loss. PJ could clear it but doesn't, Cooper decided to clear it but didn't. Against Forest we saw also the problem with BPF in goal as his starting position didn't need to be so far back, he was moving backwards and was then in the 6 yard box when PJ attempted the back pass. When PJ glanced up before attempting the back pass BPF was on the penalty spot and if he'd stayed there or even advanced then he probably gets to the back pass - not that it wasn't a sh*te back pass but just highlighting the huge difference between the way BPF and Casillas read the game and how hard it is for the defenders to adapt.

Anyway that's beside the point in terms of the actual subject.

Start of the season and what were the goals? Ambitious fans would have said play-offs. Most were probably predicting mid table. So in terms of that it was a successful season. Judging the season as a whole it was successful, judging it based on where we were at certain points is to some degree pointless because the point of a league is to be judged over the whole season. You could win your first 10 or your last 10 but you get the same amount of points. Take some of those last minute winners away in the 7 match winning run and instead add them to the matches later in the season and it would look like we had really been doing well at the end of the season to try to snatch an automatic spot, take the 2 injury time goals away from the Blackburn match and add them to the Wigan match as an example.

So for me you have to judge the season over the whole and we had lots of ups and downs. We had far more performances where we got a narrow iwn than we had performances where we were great, so we weren't as great as we looked in some games and we weren't as sh*t as we looked in some games. Overall we were probably consistently inconsistent able to beat the best and able to lose to the worst. Norwich and Sheff Utd were slightly more consistent in this league where everyone can beat everyone.

So the question is have we made progress and the answer is a huge yes. For a new coach to come in and change the style usually takes a long time for the players to adapt - just look at Chelsea and 'Sarri-Ball.' Bielsa somehow got a team that had for the main part looked incapable of putting passes together under Heckingbottom and suddenly turned them into a team playing possession football all over the pitch. He didn't even need to change the players we had, he just made them all better. So we improved our league position by 10 places. We improved our style of play. We improved the ability of all the players. We improved our youth set-up.

A successful season - 100% yes. Icing on the cake in getting promoted would have been great but we now have a great big delicious cake to eat instead of the soggy biscuit that we were left to eat last summer.
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Re: A Successful Season?

Post by hector »

Ditto

This is why I said yes :)
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Re: A Successful Season?

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1964white wrote: Fri May 24, 2019 11:07 am It was doing my head in when I was reading various club forums, so many were saying we would screw up, even the Man City main site with their topic on Leeds had run over 80 pages last time I viewed it. They were spot on with their assessment of our demise
DON'T READ OTHER CLUBS FORUMS..simples

they're as biased and uniformed as we are of their clubs...If you're looking for validation you're going to be frustrated.

Go read Kiplings IF..and breath
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Re: A Successful Season?

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And yes it's getting tiresome, but Weasel is right again
"Never debate an idiot, they'll only drag you down to their level and they have the advantage of experience"
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Re: A Successful Season?

Post by WhiteRose »

Depends what perspective you judge it from. if someone had offered a vague prediction last summer that touched on the highlights of the 18/19 season not necessarily how it would ultimately end then i think all supporters given the fact that we essentially had the same team as the season before would have shot them down and said no chance. So from this perspective it was a successful season. We played great football in most parts, had some great results, Bielsa got a lot more out of the same players and we had a fantastic youth campaign both in terms of the U23's and youth players introduced to the first team.

Whilst the aforementioned successes still remain and have left a good legacy for the season to come no matter what perspective you view it from. With the benefit of hindsight in terms of achievement we cant say it was a wholly successful season. We were in the top 2 for the vast majority of the season and were in a commanding position in the playoffs and then the players simply bottled it. I dont buy that we ran out of steam the players still looked fit and were putting the effort in but we lost our cutting edge and finishing and we were to a degree worked out. The worst teams in the division found that if they sat deep and defended we lacked the craft to break them down and would be vulnerable on the break.

I do worry that last season we had a surprise factor for the first few months and once teams worked out how to nullify us it was clear we didn't have a plan b. We dont have the quality of players a team like man city has that means we can stick to the plan and win regardless of how the opposition play. I hope Bielsa stays and we get the continuity from one season to the next we have craved for many a year but i also hope he has learned from this year and has an alternate game plan lined up for when we are struggling to break teams down.
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Re: A Successful Season?

Post by lufc1304 »

What weasel said.

Was the target at the start of the season promotion? And I mean above and beyond the hope fans harbour every season. When Radz and MB sat down, was that the aim? If so, then perhaps it was a failure, but I've maintained all along that this was a 2 year project under Bielsa. He worked miracles with a limited, small and injury-ravaged squad to even get us to the position that some can class our season as a failure. For me, this season was about instilling the style he wanted, assessing the resources he had and planning for a proper tilt this coming season. I'd hazard a guess the players exceeded his expectations. However, as the season neared it's climax, it can't have escaped his attention that some of those players he improved beyond recognition were regressing back to their natural level. That, plus his naivety on just how attritional the Championship is, meant I never bought this idea that we were nailed on to go up. I always had doubts that we could sustain it for what turned out to be 48 games. Am I disappointed we didn't make it? Of course I am. Has this season been a success? F**k yes, it has, best season we've had in years, loved it!

Read a great quote in the aftermath of the second leg; this isn't the beginning of the end, it's the end of the beginning. MOT
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Re: A Successful Season?

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the most frustrating disappointing enjoyable exciting season for donkeys years. succeeded my expectations so on the whole a success.
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Re: A Successful Season?

Post by SG90 »

1964white wrote: Fri May 24, 2019 11:07 am It was doing my head in when I was reading various club forums, so many were saying we would screw up, even the Man City main site with their topic on Leeds had run over 80 pages last time I viewed it. They were spot on with their assessment of our demise
Why do they have an 80 page thread on us if they don't care about us? :duno:
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Re: A Successful Season?

Post by 1964white »

Doesn't success mean achieving the end goal

Surely one can't claim 'improvement' as being successful

Our form was nothing short of mid-table between January & May which is where we finished in the table last season, yes we showed massive improvement up to Christmas & is the main reason why we finished 3rd in championship. Once again we fell away badly so much so if there were four more games we'd have struggled to maintain a play-off position.
Our season was more or less finished after the home defeat v Wigan :( The writing was on the wall long before that game though

Success is about achievement !
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Re: A Successful Season?

Post by Dalton »

Sadly agree with 64 here. It wasnt that dissimilar to the season before. We led the table and were up there and then January came and it went tits up.
Even with Monk we were in a cemented play off place and blew that as well.
My main beef with MB is that there ARE players like Shacks that could and should have had more game time when his untouchable regulars were underperforming week in week out.
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