 Many fans will have woke. up this morning and looked in their brew this morning searching for answers on why the wheels have fallen off the bus on Leeds' run to what looked like a certain place in the top six. I know it's not over until the large lady sings, but she's warming up her throat already. A lot of things need to happen for this season to deliver what it had promised since November. If I may I will put my case on why it seems to have gone Pete Tong; 1. Strength in depth The most important reason is that if you look at most of the teams challenging, Leeds' squad is small compared to most and the reluctance of the co-owners to invest in January has in my opinion come back to bite the team in the arse. I'd like to put a little 'meat' into my argument too, around the time the window opened we'd just beaten Preston North End away, without Chris Wood who was out injured but still a few negative murmurs were coming out of the club. In one Massimo Cellino said the squad was too big and advised his co-owner Andrea Radrizzani to keep his euros or pounds in his wallet. Big mistake boys, as we have found in April the squad is 'treading water' and a few, in some games look to be honest, knackered. I don't like to single out player's but can anybody tell me one contribution that Mo Barrow has done since his arrival from Swansea on loan?  Barrow has not been present during the loan spell and seems a poor price of rushed business. At least Alfonso Pedraza on occasions has shown he has the ability to score a goal and go past a player or two, signing Barrow came out of desperation from the owners not the Head Coach. 2. Sutton United FA Cup There are times in a Head Coaches tenure at clubs when with the best possible intentions you get it totally wrong. I'm sure Garry Monk thought he'd pick a decent team to beat their Non League opponents but the one's left out may not have been so impressed, a live TV game with a chance to show football what they could do. The performances straight after that showed a 'chink' in the armour and maybe morale was affected. I'm not privy to the inner workings of the club but that's how it seemed to me as a supporter. 3. Constant Changes A can count on my fingers the time Garry Monk keep the same team, even if we'd played well and won the week before, look at most teams that do well and you'll see that their supporters could name their team week-on-week, at Leeds this didn't happen and I'm still not sure Garry Monk knows his best eleven even now. 4. PontusGate There is no doubting the ability of the Swedish marauder but two incidents remain within the confines of the Theatre of Everlasting Hope. On both occasions whatever happened was serious enough to drop the centre half and the way it was kept quiet still needs a little explanation and his agent hasn't helped with constant hawking of the talents of said player around the Premier League. Rumours they may be but it doesn't sit well with fans or colleagues if you might be 'talking the talk, but not walking the walk'.  Is it a simple misunderstanding or has their been a divide between Jansson and some of his colleagues I hope he stays; maverick or not alongside Bartley he has been immense, but I feel he may always have a little 'baggage' with him.
5. Defeats Barnsley A, Cardiff City H, Brentford A, Wolves H and Burton A. All games that you'd expect at least to get a point from each. We didn't seem to come out of international breaks in the same way as we went into them. I may be a bit premature, because if Ipswich, Brentford and Sheffield Wednesday do Leeds a favour I may be writing a completely different article, my head made me write this article not my heart. As it stands I don't see anybody doing that and we've still to beat Norwich City and Wigan Athletic to give us a chance again. I'm not saying it's been a poor season, because it hasn't. The links developed between team and supporters has been superb and the belief is that this is the start of better times at Leeds United. We've waited so long for a team that we could aline ourselves with. I'm immensely proud to be a supporter of this team, I just feel that like the team that got so close in 2011, a little bit of money spent on the squad would have been the difference between a good season and a really great season. MOT By Keith Ingham
17 Comments
Wayne
23/4/2017 08:36:28 am
Great article totally agree games up I'm afraid Leeds have been found out if teams domanate the midfield it leaves cw isolated wingers not good enough even on the break seems to me monk came in and concentrated on the defensive frailties but not much else
James
23/4/2017 08:47:36 am
Sheffield Wednesday have a 10 million pound striker sat on the bench to bring on when necessary. This sums up the difference in our squad and some of those around us. Investment is needed to add to the current squad and we will be up there again next season.
Sprake
23/4/2017 08:56:16 am
Good article. I think players have failed the Club, fans and manager. Monk has been with us all season and has had chances to shape the team. Tactically he has been poor apart from against the top sides. Playing 1 up front and especially someone without pace or unable to hold a ball up just does not work unless you rely on shutting up shop against the good sides and hope for a one off chance. Against the weaker sides it has been a dreadful strategy. We have scabbed single goal wins against some poor teams, but poor teams who have been better than us. Sorry but we have only played about 3 good games this season, and playing poor football and winning games is not sustainable, hence why we have been found lacking at the end of the season. Mr Monk needs to pick his first team and stick with it, but his midfield has been deadful. We are good at the back, have a striker that has scored well considering his lack of ability, but Gary Monk has got to take responsibility for our dreadful midfield as he has signed most of them. If he can't fix this then he needs to go. Being top half and not in the playoffs is not acceptable. Spot on. Look at the value of the squads in the top 6 and compare them to Leeds. We are at the business end of the season with a tired, inexperienced and imbalanced squad. The other teams have the strength in depth and it is now showing. Investment, investment, investment! Sorry, don't want to mention anyone's name but the other owners are more ambitious and put their money where their mouth is!
Steve Jennings
23/4/2017 10:11:25 am
Really good article that is just about bang on. Well done mate.
Rex
23/4/2017 10:40:28 am
Excellent article & thank goodness for some sensible comments. I'm really sick of knee-jerk moaners slagging off everything to do with the club. We are no way ready for the Prem just now, look how badly Middlesbrough are faring. I really believe we are on an upward curve & look forward to some substantial investment over the summer. The most pleasing thing this season has been the re-establishment of the relationship between the team & the fans. MOT 23/4/2017 10:50:10 am
Good article. Shame about the really poor spelling and grammar.
FRED
23/4/2017 11:53:51 am
Very good article. The central midfield has been the weak area of the team for most of this season and has been far too negative.
Dean Krol
23/4/2017 12:14:04 pm
I personally don't feel that Garry Monk is the right man for us, I think he's too inexperienced, too gung ho, too arrogant and has absolutely zero plan B. I got hammered last week on Twitter for saying so, got called a nonce, a peado, told to kill myself (by our own fans none the less) simply because I feel this way. But look at it from your head and not your heart for a minute. Monk was still tinkering with formations and tactics during the first month of the season when most managers had settled on a set up and stuck to it, we were 2nd bottom of the league, only when we signed Pontus and Ayling did results start to improve. Monk made Sol Bamba club captain and a week later, told him to do one (why make him captain in the first place?) He refuses to play players that are miles better than the ones he plays, he brings in players and then leaves them sat on the bench every week, as you pointed out, he chops and changes the team every game for no reason. Drops (or as he puts it) rests players for no reason and plays crap in thier place. He picks players who are playing shite every week like Hernandez, Doukara and Phillips and he just can not motivate the team to start matches on the front foot. When was the last time we actually dominated a team in the first 45 minutes? We look half asleep and only seem to wake up in the last 20 minutes. He has been extremely lucky with some of our results this season, I mean, stats don't lie, a majority of the games we have won, we've been drastically outplayed and relied on teams wasting chance after chance before we've put one of the few chances we've created away. We have the 3rd lowest goal attempts ratio in the league and have had to rely heavily on last ditch defending from Jansson and great saves from Green. We create almost nothing under his way of playing and yet he just will not change it. He watches us get battered for 45 minutes and you'd expect him to change it around at half time, but no, he just sends the team out and does the same thing in the 2nd halves. It really does show how class Chris Wood has been this season, that he's managed to score as many goals as he has from probably the lowest number of chances of any striker in our league. Monk tries to play like Barcelona but we don't have the quality to do that. What I mean by that is, we get the ball forward down the wings but instead of then crossing the ball for Wood and co to attack, our players seem to turn back and try to play int all around the box and 90% of the time, this results in us losing the ball and ending up under attack ourselves. Seriously, what's wrong with getting the ball forward and crossing it into the box? That's how you score goals, not tippy tapping it backwards all the time and trying to play it around the box until you can find a gap to play it through, we don't have the players skillful enough to do that.It frustrates to watch how we play every week and to see how most Leeds fans adore Garry Monk and see him as some sort of messiah when he's clearly not got a clue what he's doing half the time. I hope on here I can get some sensible debate rather than having my life threatened or being called a kiddie fiddler for having a passionate and brutally honest opinion.
M Willatzen
23/4/2017 08:36:33 pm
Spot on Dean Krol. Garry Monk's poor tactics shows everything. His stupid and ridiculous positive statements after each game, indicating hope where hope is not to be found, makes me angry and sad.
peter duval
24/4/2017 02:23:06 am
Every man has the right to his opinion and providing its expressed rationally and fairly there should never be issue.
Richard ONeil
23/4/2017 12:32:42 pm
I can do nothing but totally agree with the comments made, which are Blunt and honest {typically Yorkshire}. I want to add a couple of points though. In Monk I trust, he is young and lm sure a future England Manager, he can only put out a team of the players he has at his disposal. He's happy to give the youngsters opportunities, which surely encourages other up and coming kids at ER. We have a good youth policy and have had some excellent youngsters come through. In my opinion we have 1 goal scorer in CW and 1 playmaker in Pablo, if they have an off day who else is there? Let's hope Gary has an extended contract offered and let's pray he accepts.
Jim
23/4/2017 10:05:12 pm
Very good article that sums things up perfectly. We have punched above our weight this season. Yes we are a PL club in terms of fan base and stadium but that's it. It's going to be another uncertain pre-season of what players we can keep and if Monk decides to go you know its because there is yet again no guarantee of finances to support his plans. Until we get that backing it'll be a few more years of yo-yo-ing up and down the Championship. Hopefully we'll keep are best players and find another 'Strachan' with experience and quality to sort out our midfield and get us back to the promised land.
Peter Varley
24/4/2017 12:23:32 am
I agree that the massive error made by Monk was picking a joke team against Sutton. This defeat knocked the stuffing out of Leeds. Before then Elland Road was full of energy, excitement, enjoyment. After it all this energy dissipated. Fact: points per game before Sutton was 1.9 points, points per game after Sutton was 1.3 points Something changed. Another error was not playing O Kane. O Kane has the best return in points per game played, not just among the midfielders but amongst the entire squad. Did Monk not know this?
Malcolm Meeson
24/4/2017 09:05:03 am
Great report, you would do well writing the matchday report in the Yorkshire Evening Post. Agree that the "Sutton" result didn't do us any favours, and that a lack of a couple of new midfielders in January would have helped.
Sloughwhites
24/4/2017 10:19:34 pm
Good piece picking out some specific moments in our season which were significant. Leave a Reply. |
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