The #LUFC Breakfast Debate (Tue 23rd Apr)

[Ellandback1]

Good Morning Everyone

Leeds second defeat in 72 hours more or less handed the Blades a pass to the 2019/20 Premier League on a silver platter!

Where did it all go wrong for the Whites?

Did they run out of steam?



Would the Daniel James transfer have made a big difference?

If so, did Leeds really have to wait until the 11th hour to sign him?

Perhaps they wanted to wait until the last minute to keep the fans guessing?

Will he or won't he?

Then at the last minute - big marquee signing!!!



With such a small squad, surely it would have made sense to bring in some experience from the Premiership - players that weren't getting much game time, that didn't mind dropping a division in order to win a promotion race and be idolised by hundreds of thousands of fans!



Would it have made a difference if we had kept Viera and Saiz? - Should at least one of these players have been replaced?



Why does it seem that every other club in the division have better loanees than we do?



Why has Izzy Brown not been used? We've seen what he can do two seasons ago when Huddersfield tore us apart!



Has Hernandez been overused? He is now 34? Should he be playing in every game?



Should all our senior players now be rested until the play offs?

[R0lferoo]

Team needs a complete overhaul in the summer,Clarke and Phillips will probably move on,weather radz will use the money too strengthen is debatable,wouldn't surprise me if bielsa is gone as well,and who can blame him,we should of strengthened in January but we screwed that up,all in all completely gutted,no chance in the playoffs I'm afraid.
MOT

[Ellandback1]

Team needs a complete overhaul in the summer,Clarke and Phillips will probably move on,weather radz will use the money too strengthen is debatable,wouldn't surprise me if bielsa is gone as well,and who can blame him,we should of strengthened in January but we screwed that up,all in all completely gutted,no chance in the playoffs I'm afraid.
MOT

Morning Roo and welcome to the forum

I think I agree with you but why did we not strengthen.

Almost every single fan on social media was pleading with Radz to bring fresh blood in.

I know the coffers were in short amounts but surely the lure of 150m is sufficient to go all in.

Radz did half a job - well 70% of a job. Why gamble with the other 30 percent especially as long of our loanees were working out.

Why do half a job?

[Ellandback1]

Pick a song that has reflected our season?

[1964white]

Team needs a complete overhaul in the summer,Clarke and Phillips will probably move on,weather radz will use the money too strengthen is debatable,wouldn't surprise me if bielsa is gone as well,and who can blame him,we should of strengthened in January but we screwed that up,all in all completely gutted,no chance in the playoffs I'm afraid.
MOT

Welcome to MOT R0lf

Great first post

Agree with your sentiments

Our signings were awful, only one of them achieves above 5/10 on the whole season performances imo.

I called Radz right, why we always attract owners who have no money or are not prepared to invest in our playing squad god only knows

I called the slim/lack of depth in our squad right

I called our lack of ambition with the need to improve the squad as soon as the January window opened right

It was quite obvious we'd run out steam, also you can't continually polish turds over a long period. Our players v QPR, Birmingham, Wigan & Brentford looked like the ones we witnessed last season, the resemblance is uncanny !

[Ratscoot]

Good Morning Everyone

Leeds second defeat in 72 hours more or less handed the Blades a pass to the 2019/20 Premier League on a silver platter!

Where did it all go wrong for the Whites?

Did they run out of steam?

Not buying a proper centre forward in Jan, pretty much every fan was screaming for this, I don’t think we ran out of steam most of the players still look pretty fit but we have suffered with injuries


Would the Daniel James transfer have made a big difference?

Possibly, he appears to be a better player than Harrison so may well have supplied the crosses/passes to open the opposition


With such a small squad, surely it would have made sense to bring in some experience from the Premiership - players that weren't getting much game time, that didn't mind dropping a division in order to win a promotion race and be idolised by hundreds of thousands of fans!

100%


Would it have made a difference if we had kept Viera and Saiz? - Should at least one of these players have been replaced?

not sure keeping them would have made a difference but replacing them would have been a good idea, imagine if Saiz had been replaced by Sergio Canos

Why does it seem that every other club in the division have better loanees than we do?
f**k knows


Why has Izzy Brown not been used? We've seen what he can do two seasons ago when Huddersfield tore us apart!

Waste of a loan by not giving him a chance

Has Hernandez been overused? He is now 34? Should he be playing in every game?

Yes massively he’s looked off the pace last two games but also frustrated with the other players

Should all our senior players now be rested until the play offs?
Some should - perhaps Bamford, Harrison, Klich and/or Pablo, Pontus (controversial I know) but we need to inject something back into the team and I think a couple of the under 23s can do this

I’m still so angry from yesterday just hope no one pisses me off today in London

[dezzy]

Pablo has been flogged, him more than anyone needs a rest before the play offs, giving him a rest will freshen him up and give someone else a chance to impress Bielsa. I’d be resting, Pablo Klich and Pontus, sit Bamford on the bench and let Roofe get some sharpness. Harrison needs to be on the bench too. The play offs are the new goal so we should prepare for them as best we can.
The James deal was the biggest mistake we’ve made, with him we would have gone up automatically. Far too Blaise on that one, when they had Kiko sealed they took the foot off the pedal, for what? Save half a million or so? Best owner and board we’ve had but that was a stinker.

[Sara]

Good morning everyone.

Leeds' last 5 matches:

113 shots
27 shots on-target
4 goals
3 defeats
3.5% conversion rate

Absolutely shambolic conversion rate. Leeds have created more chances than any other Championship side this season (577), but we're the fifth-highest scorers (70). Poor end product.

Given these stats, I don't see that signing James or a replacement for Saiz would have been the answer. We are creating the chances, but not putting them away. For me, this points to the injuries to our strikers, which meant that we have not had them both fit for much of the season. The injury to Roofe, in particular, coincides with our poor run of results.

We signed Bamford, and his goals to games ratio is very good. You can't just go out and sign another 10 million pound striker to cover an injury, even if a suitable candidate had been available. With hindsight, would we have been better with Vydra? Not necessarily, as his attitude might not have worked so well in a Bielsa team.

Bielsa has said there is no lack of effort or determination from this team, but it has limitations which have been hidden by the players willingness to do the work Bielsa has asked them to do. If the answer was putting in a particular player from the 23s, or going for more signings in January, then I think Bielsa would have said so.

His approach is very specialised, and identifying the players he believes can carry it out is one of his strengths. He has great experience in this, and he chose to come to Leeds because he believed he could work with the squad that was already here. He has seen qualities in these players which no one else had, and he has taken them to within a whisker of the premier league in one season; they may yet get there.

I don't think now is a time for recriminations, however much we are hurting from the weekend's results. This team has brought unexpected levels of pride and joy this season, and they deserve our support until the end. Bielsa may not always make the right choices, but he has by far exceeded all our expectations. Let's see what he can do in the last few games.

[Dalton]

Funny thing is we ALL seem to have written off the play off chances!
Me included!
Just running right out of steam at the wrong time
BUT it only takes a bit of magic to get promoted i guess

Don't write us off...yet.

[mothbanquet]

I don't think now is a time for recriminations, however much we are hurting from the weekend's results. This team has brought unexpected levels of pride and joy this season, and they deserve our support until the end. Bielsa may not always make the right choices, but he has by far exceeded all our expectations. Let's see what he can do in the last few games.

Sara has the right of it. The only reason this weekend hurt us is because of heightened expactations caused by lack of perspective. Marcelo Bielsa and a small handful of more or less consistent players have brought us to where we are, further than we ever dared imagine and back to being proud of who and what we are. It's painful to come so close to promotion and then see it slip from our fingers, of course it is, but let's get real here.

Bielsa did not join us to win promotion first time of asking. That was never, ever a guarantee and his contract reflects that. It is OUR choice whether to keep him on another season and to take a team from a 14th-placed finish to a 3rd place finish in the space of one season with barely any changes to the squad is more than justification to give him another crack at it. I think we've seen enough of Bielsa to know that he will consider the Championship an unfinished job and I've no doubt he'll relish the chance to win it again.

I see these questions being asked; why didn't we strengthen? Why didn't we do this? Why not that? IF the ultimate goal from the very start was to get promoted this season then those questions would be valid, but that could not conceivably have been the aim. It would've taken a miracle, and a miracle very nearly occurred - but it didn't. Bielsa has now almost played a full season with us. He knows our strengths and weaknesses, who is fit for promotion and who isn't. This wasn't always clear and many people had written off players such as Ayling after the Jan transfer window, only to see him grow into a valued part of the team.

The knee-jerk reaction is one that managers and owners HAVE to avoid, to splash cash at a problem and hope they've gotten it right the first time because they can't afford a second time (see Fulham for a perfect example). If I'm right in my judgement, then Radz has looked beyond this season, always has, to the future.

He's playing the long game with Bielsa, allowing him to get the true measure of this league and the team at his disposal. You can't make long term decisions like this based on a few games or even a dozen games. These players have been through the highest of highs and lowest of lows. Bielsa knows them inside out and I anticipate we'll be seeing some new faces over the summer, faces hand-picked to replace those who have been inconsistent, crumbled under pressure, or simply aren't good enough to begin with. It's because we didn't just panic buy in Jan that we're in the position to truly assault the league next season, and that is what I believe has been the intention all along.

Let's not forget the high standards placed on Bielsa's players. Newcomers will have to be able to hack the pre-season beasting, which narrows the list, and another reason experienced players will not be highly sought after. I expect to see youngsters promoted, youngsters who know the system, are fit as a fiddle and will continue to get better as the season goes on. Moreover, these lads are winners.

We need to remember the Cellino regime and the constant stream of embarrassment on and off the pitch, the name of our great club being flogged and dragged through the mud. Compared to that, this season has been a dream, even if it ends in a rude awakening.

[Cjay]

It went wrong as soon as the board decided to gamble on Bielsa being enough without proper backing in the transfer market.

The Dan James situation was a farce (confirmed now that we could have signed him earlier had we coughed up). How many more January transfer windows will Radz let pass us by before he realises "that'll do" isn't the right attitude?

For the sake of a few grand Radz may have cost us and himself hundreds of millions of pounds and i fear for the future should we not go up.

Izzy Brown was another stupid and arrogant attempt by the club to do things cheaply, a signing done 6 months in advance with no real thought except "ah well we won't pay for it for ages". He was never going to feature, not a Bielsa player.

Other clubs make better loan signings i suspect because they pay up, we missed out on Harry Wilson because of a loan fee.

We have this extraordinary habit of being cheap and paying for it, Sergi Canos ripped us a new one last night, he was available a few seasons back but guess what, we wanted a loan rather then outright buy, sound familiar?

Dan James would have made a difference, look at the impact he has made at Swansea since January (his shot coming off the post ended in the goal yesterday to). But Radz as I've written before will not take risks.

Hernandez has been flogged to death, i felt so sorry for him yesterday. He looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Again though the finger points towards the board, let Saiz go, Baker left, creatively we needed help and they didnt provide it.

Yes they should (unless Ipswich do us a favour) highly unlikely though so yes, lets give Hernandez, Klich, Ayling, Bamford, Cooper, Jansson a rest. Bring in Bogusz, Shacks, Gotts, Edmondson, Diaz, Struijk, and give Roofe the minutes he needs to try and regain some form of match sharpness.

[Chilli D]

Afternoon All,

So barring a miracle it's the play offs for us.
Extremely disappointing when you consider how things looked 10 days ago.
But it's worth remembering we're 10 places better off than last season. When you look it like that, the players for the most part have done well.
And despite the general consensus, promotion is still a possibility albeit via the horrible play offs.

I can't make up my mind whether we should rest players for the Villa game or not.
Is it too early to do that before it's mathematically impossible to get automatic promotion? I'm not sure.

Mistakes have been made with regards to the squad for sure.
Izzy Brown - what was the point?
Dan James - embarrassing saga
Some of the U23's - should have been given their chance. Too late now to know whether they could handle the pressure. Jamie Shackleton should definitely had more game time.

[Ellandback1]

Phil Hay
‏@PhilHayYEP

Pablo Hernandez was very emotional at full-time. Bielsa: "Pablo deserved to finish first or second. He and the whole team, but especially him. I understand how he feels."

[Sara]

Is it too early to do that before it's mathematically impossible to get automatic promotion? I'm not sure.

Yes, I think so.

[Chilli D]

Phil Hay
‏@PhilHayYEP

Pablo Hernandez was very emotional at full-time. Bielsa: "Pablo deserved to finish first or second. He and the whole team, but especially him. I understand how he feels."

If anyone deserves promotion it's Pablo.
Even when he hasn't had the best of games he always wanted the ball and gave his all.
I hope the rest of the squad are hurting as much as him.

[BGwhite]

Too gutted for words. I so felt for Pablo it hurt. It ain't over yet but it feels like it is.

Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk