A poor performance but no need for doom and gloom

After a superb November, Leeds have won only two points in their last three games. But there is no need for doom and gloom. Preston have been up in the play-off positions all season and third for a lot of the time too. They have had a bit of a wobble but even during their wobble they were very unlucky to lose 1-0 to West Brom, conceding from an extremely dubious injury time penalty after looking the more likely team to score the winning goal. The Lillywhites set out with a game plan to get into us quickly on Boxing Day. They executed their game plan superbly and got the additional bonus of a goal. Derby tried to do this to us in the first leg of the play-off, you can imagine the tactically devoid Lampard giving the traditional Sunday League team talk and telling them to get stuck into us from the start and not let us settle. However Preston are a much better side than Derby were and had the fitness to carry it on far longer than Derby could.

We played poorly in the first half an hour but we have to give Alex Neil credit for his game plan and to his players for executing it. With Bielsa's system it is all based on players moving into positions on the pitch so that their teammates can almost 'blind' pass into areas where they know our players will be moving to. Our players didn't suddenly go from players who probably had 60% pass ratios pre-Bielsa to suddenly becoming much better passers of the ball, what they had was a place to pass to without having to look up, without having to make the pass pinpoint etc. Preston worked hard on getting players into the areas to intercept our passes by working out where they needed to be on the. As such Preston pressed two-fold they pressed the man on the ball but were also making their other players move into positions to intercept or pressurise the player receiving the ball.




It was clear in that first half an hour we missed the quality of Pablo Hernandez though. Players like Pablo have that extra bit of class to be able to hold onto the ball longer, the composure to retain the ball and wait that extra second before passing the ball, to be able to ignore the routine pass and then the ability to play the killer pass. The rest of the team are almost to some degree like robots, able to play on autopilot, following Bielsa's instructions and play the passes into the right area to keep us in possession, but lacking the creative flair of a player like Pablo. But then 99.9% of footballers don't have the ability that Pablo has.

After the first thirty minutes the game panned out similarly to a lot of our games this season. We dominated possession, created plenty of chances but never really looked like scoring. However, when you keep putting the opposition under pressure then your hard work will often pay-off and you earn any luck you get. We played poorly, by our high standards, yet deserved a draw against a top six side. We have had a bit of a wobble yet still have an eight point cushion with the teams below us all taking points of each other so it is hardly a shock if we only draw against a decent side. For all that Brentford are supposedly the team with momentum they have only taken two more points than us over the last five matches.

We didn't play great yet we got a point. We probably played better against Fulham but got nothing.


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