Leeds 1-1 Wolves: Verdict Thread

[PuntsWolf]

It was as pen. As I said, in the ground it looked stonewall.

You simply can’t put in that challenge from the wrong side. Shoved him, made contact with his thigh, he’s running at pace. It’s going to knock him over even he did maybe exaggerate it. Bit like when he gave the one away against McGinn last year. He’s done you. Don’t compound it by fouling Him as well

It’s annoying how he’s managed to get in that position but once he has you’ve just got to let him go and hope he crosses out of play, cleared by first man or straight to Sa like every other time. Giving them a free shot from 12 yards was the only way they were going to score.

As for why do we name 2 GKs. 3 travel to every away game anyway in case someone gets injured in warm up, feels ill, whatever. So may as well name them in the 9 rather than take another U23 who you definitely know isn’t going to play.

 

[Jinky]

Spot on.

Of course it's fine to highlight improvements that need making, and I do hope Bruno can find a balance (we have to surely be patient with this) soon, but results are important too and it's bloody not easy to win or even draw sometimes in the PL if you're not a big club. Ask most of the clubs below us who are scrabbling for points.

I just can't buy this line I keep hearing about how people wouldn't mind losing if we were playing fancy dan football. It's so easy to say

My reaction is based purely on the game and performance that I have watched. My reaction after this game is in isolation to this performance (rather than the rest of our season). And what I saw, was a side who didn’t gain any control of the football match either with possession or with a clear plan (unless the plan was to literally defend for 60+ minutes).

The reality is, the two sides were very even. We found ourselves in front. Stick to the game plan & you may get another. Especially with that long left. Don’t shut up shop that early and do nothing other than defend, otherwise we have no one else to blame than ourselves when we don’t hold on.

We were playing (a weakened) Leeds Utd. Not Liverpool.

 

[Tony Towner]

I just can't buy this line I keep hearing about how people wouldn't mind losing if we were playing fancy dan football. It's so easy to say

I don't think that's a widely held view (appreciate Jinky, more or less said it)

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

I just can't buy this line I keep hearing about how people wouldn't mind losing if we were playing fancy dan football. It's so easy to say

Aye. And without wishing to play the superfan card, I don't want to spend the thick end of £600 a year on tickets alone to watch us lose. I wasn't exactly grinning from ear to ear when we lost to Spurs and United, we lost and didn't score, in binary terms that is shit.

 

[Alan]

I do think some people are also sorely missing out on the fact that, until we tired so drastically in the last 10 minutes or so (and especially after Gelhardt started getting isolated 1v1 against our defenders), all of Leeds' possession amounted to absolutely fuck all. I think we got that part of the tactics absolutely spot on and Bruno deserves at least a little credit for that. We funneled their attacks into nonthreatening areas for the most part, and even when they got in behind we defended crosses and second balls quite well, I thought.

Special shout outs to our GK coach who works on defending in the box; our clearances have improved drastically over the course of the season thus far, and you could pick just about any game out of a hat from last season and come away with the conclusion that such improvement was desperately needed. So good on him for making that improvement happen.

 

[Johnny75]

Aye. And without wishing to play the superfan card, I don't want to spend the thick end of £600 a year on tickets alone to watch us lose. I wasn't exactly grinning from ear to ear when we lost to Spurs and United, we lost and didn't score, in binary terms that is shit.

Binary is for people who watch on the BBC website.

Nobody wants to see us lose but it wasn't as though we couldn't have won those games and we should've won those games but for abject finishing (and Mike fucking Dean)

The thing to improve was finishing not to go all defensive and play Championship clogging football where you bash it into the corners and hope.

What we have now is the same attritional football we did last season. That's ok if you like that sort of thing I guess.

 

[Johnny75]

I do think some people are also sorely missing out on the fact that, until we tired so drastically in the last 10 minutes or so (and especially after Gelhardt started getting isolated 1v1 against our defenders), all of Leeds' possession amounted to absolutely fuck all. I think we got that part of the tactics absolutely spot on and Bruno deserves at least a little credit for that. We funneled their attacks into nonthreatening areas for the most part, and even when they got in behind we defended crosses and second balls quite well, I thought.

Special shout outs to our GK coach who works on defending in the box; our clearances have improved drastically over the course of the season thus far, and you could pick just about any game out of a hat from last season and come away with the conclusion that such improvement was desperately needed. So good on him for making that improvement happen.

Our defending has been good in all the games, particularly from set plays. A massive improvement from last season where we were poor, so kudos to Bruno and his team for that. I thought we defended very well whilst playing some great stuff.

We've been undone twice by Coady getting caught cold and Sa making two unforced errors. Again it's about cutting out errors not a general pattern in our defending.

I thought we were poor on second balls and particularly in possession of the second ball was won.

 

[Alan]

Our defending has been good in all the games, particularly from set plays. A massive improvement from last season where we were poor, so kudos to Bruno and his team for that. I thought we defended very well whilst playing some great stuff.

We've been undone twice by Coady getting caught cold and Sa making two unforced errors. Again it's about cutting out errors not a general pattern in our defending.

I thought we were poor on second balls and particularly in possession of the second ball was won.

I will agree that in terms of second balls in the middle third of the pitch we were absolutely horrendous, but I've already made my feelings about Raul's performance known. Not that he got much help from Hwang or Adama, given the one tactical decision that Bruno made on Saturday that he got objectively wrong, IMO (trying to exploit the wide areas in behind Leeds by having Hwang and Traore stay much wider than we've previously seen this season).

 

[Jinky]

I don't think that's a widely held view (appreciate Jinky, more or less said it)

To be fair, perhaps I explained it poorly (very likely). The preference would be for us to win every game while playing sexy football. If we had held on for the win v Leeds and in the process moved up to 4th in the table, despite having reservations over the tactics/performance, it would be difficult to argue with that.

If we lost every game playing how we did v Spurs, despite being entertained, we'd have still lost and people would have (rightly) been critical.

There has to be some middle-ground.

My main point here, is that we've literally flipped from creating loads and playing good football, to being a side that doesn't look like it can string three passes together. The results have been alright over the last 4-5 games, so the performances have kind of been swept under the carpet - but when we're defending for 60+ minutes against a side that we're more than capable of beating, it's only fair to question those tactics when we don't hold on for the win.

 

[Alan]

To be fair, perhaps I explained it poorly (very likely). The preference would be for us to win every game while playing sexy football. If we had held on for the win v Leeds and in the process moved up to 4th in the table, despite having reservations over the tactics/performance, it would be difficult to argue with that.

If we lost every game playing how we did v Spurs, despite being entertained, we'd have still lost and people would have (rightly) been critical.

My main point here, is that we've literally flipped from creating loads and playing good football, to being a side that doesn't look like it can string three passes together. The results have been alright over the last 4-5 games, so the performances have kind of been swept under the carpet - but when we're defending for 60+ minutes against a side that we're more than capable of beating, it's only fair to question it.

I suppose that I'd argue, again, that on Saturday this wasn't a tactical decision as much as it was the fact that none of our front three had more than 10 or 11 good touches combined throughout the match.

You can't string passes together if your attackers get knocked off the ball so easily. Part of that is all three seeing their first touch abandon them, and part of it is that Leeds' CBs had at least as good of a game as ours. Cooper, who I mentioned a few times in the matchday thread, put in a proper VVD performance on the day.

 

[Del Woppio]

I'd take 17th playing lovely football that's got a long term high ceiling over brucing our way to 12th and having no hope of it getting any better

 

[Alan]

I'd take 17th playing lovely football that's got a long term high ceiling over brucing our way to 12th and having no hope of it getting any better

So how high would you say Brighton's ceiling is?

 

[Del Woppio]

So how high would you say Brighton's ceiling is?

If they had our, ahem, financial backing (stop laughing at the back) then there's no reason why a footballing side like that couldn't disrupt the top 6

 

[Alan]

Fair enough! Not sure I agree but appreciate the consistency of your opinion.

 

[PuntsWolf]

Yes it doesn’t have to be so binary.

I was happy with the performances in the first three games but was critical about elements (such as mistakes leading to goals and not actually scoring).

I’ve then been less happy with performances but happy with results.

But just accepting results because you won (or didn’t lose) isn’t right either. You are allowed to then analyse and be critical of the performance independent of the result, becuase long term results align with performances whereas short term in football freak things influence results (Saiss missing from a yard, Pogba non foul, Neves deflected FK, Watford OG etc.).

My concern is at the minute the results are exceeding the performance. Yes Leeds weren’t very good, but our goal had an element of fortune about it (yes you make your own luck). We’ve also beat Villa with a load of luck (didn’t deserve to lose either, they were shit).

I don’t think anything had to change too much after the first few games. Results mirror performances long term and we’d have picked up points. So now that we are IMO not playing great but are picking up points, it’s not sustainable. We will start losing. Unless obviously we start playing better

 

[Del Woppio]

Fair enough! Not sure I agree but appreciate the consistency of your opinion.

Maybe it's because I'm not match going anymore, but without proper recruitment our position will basically be 8th to 17th, and wherever that is is pretty irrelevant, and so I'd rather us just play good football. We were the most boring side in the league last year, and tbh I loved watching us in those first three games, and having conversations with people about how good we looked, and how if we played like that all season we'd be in for a cracker of a year, and people would love watching us and we'd be an attractive proposition for exciting talent. Since then though we've just been so bland. It just kind of feels like the bright new dawn has already turned into a murky winter twilight and we're in for another season of meh

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

I'd take 17th playing lovely football that's got a long term high ceiling over brucing our way to 12th and having no hope of it getting any better

Wouldn't happen though, would it. Any team that starts getting into serious relegation trouble immediately focuses on getting as many points as they can as quickly as possible, by whatever means, and the easiest way to do that is to keep the opposition down to 0 or 1 goals scored.

Unless you're Ian Holloway's Blackpool, who never changed, won 3 out of their final 21 games in 2010/11 and got relegated. Still, I'm sure they enjoyed having a 4-3 and a 2-4 as their last two results.

 

[Del Woppio]

Wouldn't happen though, would it. Any team that starts getting into serious relegation trouble immediately focuses on getting as many points as they can as quickly as possible, by whatever means, and the easiest way to do that is to keep the opposition down to 0 or 1 goals scored.

Unless you're Ian Holloway's Blackpool, who never changed, won 3 out of their final 21 games in 2010/11 and got relegated. Still, I'm sure they enjoyed having a 4-3 and a 2-4 as their last two results.

Yeah I get that, and I'm exaggerating to make my point I guess, that the massive shift in approach to spawn a few points has just frustrated me a fair bit, and is I think quite short termist, and that if we're gonna be in a meh position, we may as well be entertaining at the same time

 

[Alan]

Obviously this is a pretty wild example, but Leicester didn't really play people off the pitch during the season they won the league.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

There's an element of self-preservation in it. He's a relative nobody and after three games he had 0 goals and 0 points (how unfortunate that was is up for debate, but the facts are balder than Simon Coleman).

You do what you have to, ultimately. I thought we were ok against Watford and Newcastle, deserved to win against poor opposition. Could have hung on against Leeds, might not have scored against Southampton, so swings and roundabouts. Brentford is the only game where I thought we out and out deserved to lose, with the caveat that I can't comment on the Villa game as I didn't see any of it live.

I don't think we're good enough to think "we're good enough to get points on the board regardless, so we may as well have a go". There's always going to be an element of grinding it out until we sign better players.