Leeds United v Barnsley - MATCH THREAD

14 Jul 2020 04:34 pm, by Ellandback1

Leeds United v Barnsley FC

Thursday 16th July at 17.00 pm | Elland Road

Top of the Championship Leeds entertain relegation threatened Barnsley on Thursday tea time, as the Whites look to move within a point of automatic Promotion. The Tykes are not going to make life easy for Bielsa's men - not only is it a local derby, but Barnsley, who are fighting for their lives, have only lost once since the season restarted and have picked up valuable wins against QPR and Blackburn in recent games.

Leeds have been dealt a major blow after it was revealed that Kalvin Phillips is likely to miss the rest of the season. Phillips played the second half of Sunday’s win at Swansea City with heavy strapping on his left leg, and was expected to be fit for Barnsley's visit, However, Bielsa has now confirmed, in his pre match press conference that he has not recovered in time! Ben White is expected to deputise. The 24 year old defensive midfielder has been instrumental in ensuring the Whites have kept twenty clean sheets so far this term, four more than their closest rivals Fulham. With White stepping into Phillips shoes, we can expect to see crowd favourite Gaetano Berardi partner Liam Cooper at centre back.

Kiko Casilla's is once again, available for selection. The former Real Madrid shot stopper was given an eight game ban after an FA investigation found him guilty of using racist language towards Charlton loanee Jonathan Leko. However, the Spaniard will likely have to make do with a place on the bench as 20 year old Illan Meslier has impressed between the sticks and made the number one jersey his own.

Leeds Starting XI
Meslier, Ayling, Berardi, Cooper, Dallas, White, Klich, Harrison, Costa, Roberts, Bamford

Subs: Casillia, Casey, Douglas, Struijk, Stevens, Shackleton, Alioski, Poveda, Hernandez

394 Comments

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weasel wrote on 17 Jul 2020 10:51 am

Some people need to get a grip. It was one bad performance in a season where we have several times been spoilt by the football this team produce. If this sort of performance had happened several times then maybe you worry as a manager but whenever we have lost before this season it hasn't been a performance anywhere near as bad as last night, we lost those games because our finishing let us down, our final ball was poor and the opposition took their limited chance(s). For whatever reason last night we didn't click. I don't see it as a pressure getting to us simply because the pressure has been on us for every match for a while now and we haven't played badly. I remember the game against Barnsley earlier in the season and despite us winning 2-0 Barnsley missed some very good chances. That match was the worst I'd seen us play defensively under Bielsa in terms of how the opposition had carved us open.

Bielsa will know what went right and what went wrong last night and win, lose or draw v Derby on Sunday I would have thought the performance will be back to normal.

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The Subhuman wrote on 17 Jul 2020 10:35 am

rrfierce wrote: ↑Fri Jul 17, 2020 10:34 am We're finishing the season weakly?

I think it's twice weakly.....

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rrfierce wrote on 17 Jul 2020 10:34 am

Peter in Blackpool wrote: ↑Fri Jul 17, 2020 9:25 am all i am trying to say is that last season we got 1 point from last 4 games that cost us promotion, if we had done the same this season we would again miss out on promotion. This will not happen now cos we won the last 2 games by riding our luck, or whatever. However, we could not claim bad luck had we only got 1 point and now need to win our last 2.....thats what happened last year when we failed, so close to it being repeated this year. Last year we did not get the run of the ball, this year we did, thats the difference this season.

MB teams notoriously finish seasons weakly, Leeds are no exceptions.

of course without MB we would have finished bottom half both seasons so no complaints from me

We're finishing the season weakly?

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Boo Radley wrote on 17 Jul 2020 10:14 am

Peter in Blackpool wrote: ↑Fri Jul 17, 2020 9:29 am no you don't. if that was the case i would make myself some good luck and win the lottery!

“The harder I work the luckier I get” Samuel Goldwyn

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Peter in Blackpool wrote on 17 Jul 2020 09:52 am

BGwhite wrote: ↑Fri Jul 17, 2020 9:36 am I don't think we can use the excuse of burnout for yesterday. They've had 3 months break . Games are always tougher when you're under the cosh and chasing the ball. It's probably done them good as long as MB doesn't run them ragged for the next 2 days. Derby will be completely different and watching Shrek run around after us for 90 mins will be fun to watch.

Sent from my moto g(8) power using Tapatalk

no we cant.

i think its more pyschological. After Swansea, the work is done, we can now relax with a couple of easy wins against bottom 6 sides.

Barnsley grew in confidence and refused to give us space to play in.

Hopefully that will give them a kick up the backside to go finish the season off at pride park, if we do, we will likely be beaten by charlton

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