Marching On Together

At the beginning of the season we were all worried about our defence, all thinking we needed another CB as a minimum. However, since our opening day match at Bolton where we conceded two goals, we haven't conceded another league goal. This tells a story as to how well players have improved under TCs guidance,cooper in particular. Early in the season things looked grim as we lost loan signing Pennington and Berardi to injuries. Since Bolton a stat appeared that Felix has only had 6 that's six, yes six clear cut attempts to deal with. This really says how good our current back four are. Also, as someone on Twitter said " we still don't know how good Felix is due to him not seeing much of the ball"

Long may it continue, I know it's not just the defence but the rest of the team for working so hard to protect the back four.

Our defence like the rest of the team have certainly surprised me how well they've started, a great defence is always the basis of a great team with us now been that fast flowing free scoring team the fact we don't let goals in means we are going to win more games than we loose Come On Leeds

Our defending as a team has been nothing short of superb

I think a lot of it is how we defend as a team , we have young players with energy to burn, they don't stop running for each other.
Cooper and Jansson look very good together.

We are organised as a unit defensively & attacking-wise

We hunt in packs especially O'Kane & Phillips who press the opposition never giving the opposition any time on the ball. our flank players such as Roofe, Allioski, Dallas work hard assisting our full backs allowing our CB's Jansson & Cooper to mop up any play around our box with ease.

Key is we constantly attack the opposition at any given opportunity rather than sit-back & invite pressure on our defence as we did so often last season where we hardly got out of own-half for long periods during games. Was it any wonder Green had to make save after save

Our current keeper plays like a sweeper at the back, comfortable with the ball at his feet & has hardly had a save to make in our first six games, three at the most !

Felix could be a world beater we have no idea he has had very little to do.

Teams dont know how to attack us, we hassle and harass in packs so they pump it long to our big back 4. Or we may sit back a bit and keep pur shape and Saiz, Alioski, Roofe etc wait to break and have a run at the opposition.

Last season we couldn't do that so much because Sacko would gallop off and be waiting for people to catch up and invariably nothing would happen. Now we have 3 or 4 exceptional tricky and pacey players who break as one.

In ways it reminds me of how Barcelona were a few years ago in that because they kept the ball so well and moved it around the pitch so well that when they did lose the ball the opposition had players completely out of position and as such the opposition then struggled to be able to keep the ball and attack Barcelona. As such Barcelona had the likes of Javier Mascherano (ex Liverpool midfielder) in their defence but were still able to keep a lot of clean sheets.
Obviously early days but I get the feeling TC has modelled us on them given how much time he spent at Barcelona and was able to see various coaches, various techniques, formations etc and how certain types of players were needed to fit into systems and as such we have not only targetted players to specifically be able to play this way but he has also identified talent in the players already at Leeds and brought it to the fore.

weasel wrote:In ways it reminds me of how Barcelona were a few years ago in that because they kept the ball so well and moved it around the pitch so well that when they did lose the ball the opposition had players completely out of position and as such the opposition then struggled to be able to keep the ball and attack Barcelona. As such Barcelona had the likes of Javier Mascherano (ex Liverpool midfielder) in their defence but were still able to keep a lot of clean sheets.
Obviously early days but I get the feeling TC has modelled us on them given how much time he spent at Barcelona and was able to see various coaches, various techniques, formations etc and how certain types of players were needed to fit into systems and as such we have not only targetted players to specifically be able to play this way but he has also identified talent in the players already at Leeds and brought it to the fore.

A certain Mr Revie model his Leeds on Real Madrid

If TC is a third as successful as the great man we are in for jolly ride

Great point Weasel

1964white wrote:We are organised as a unit defensively & attacking-wise

We hunt in packs especially O'Kane & Phillips who press the opposition never giving the opposition any time on the ball. our flank players such as Roofe, Allioski, Dallas work hard assisting our full backs allowing our CB's Jansson & Cooper to mop up any play around our box with ease.

Key is we constantly attack the opposition at any given opportunity rather than sit-back & invite pressure on our defence as we did so often last season where we hardly got out of own-half for long periods during games. Was it any wonder Green had to make save after save

Our current keeper plays like a sweeper at the back, comfortable with the ball at his feet & has hardly had a save to make in our first six games, three at the most !

couldn't have said it better myself. Thought the criticism of Cooper was harsh as he was never given a real crack. Green looked like a fish out of water playing the sweeper keeper role , He may well be the better shot stopper but distribution is key and Wiedwald has been spot on so far. 500 mins without conceding ......

Another clean sheet but a much stiffer test than Burton, even when Cooper had to come off injured, Ayling went to CB and Berardi came off the bench and slotted in at LB and Anita switched to RB.
We look much more assured at the back this season, non of the hesitation or uncertainty we've suffered over recent years.

Even though Birmingham played well it was hardly like they were able to cut us open, as Harry Redknapp would have you believe (supposedly one way traffic in the second half - yet we created by far the better chances), and only really created a couple of half chances of note.

rich_leeds64 wrote:Another clean sheet but a much stiffer test than Burton, even when Cooper had to come off injured, Ayling went to CB and Berardi came off the bench and slotted in at LB and Anita switched to RB.
We look much more assured at the back this season, non of the hesitation or uncertainty we've suffered over recent years.

Yes a much stiffer test tonight Rich we had to defend well tonight to keep Brum at bay & achieve yet another clean sheet