The #LUFC Breakfast Debate (Monday 24th January)

Good Morning. It's Monday 24th January, and here are the latest headlines from Elland Road


Toon win after Meslier blunder

An uncharacteristic blunder from Illan Meslier lifted the Magpies from within a point of safety, and dented Leeds aspirations of climbing the table in the process. During a dire encounter, where both sides were as bad as each other, Raphinha's wizardry was evident for all to see. The Brazilian unselfishly carved out three or four opportunities for others, but without a goalscoring striker on the pitch, his efforts were in vain.

Leeds could have gone ahead early on in the first half. Rodrigo carved open the Toon defence with a diagonal ball deep inside the Newcastle penalty area. Raphinha cut the ball back to James, whose effort was well saved by Dúbravka at his near post. Newcastle looked dangerous from set pieces, and should have gone ahead before the break. Leeds failed to clear a corner, but Shelvey's volley was miraculously tipped around the post by Meslier.

The game looked like it was heading for a goalless draw until fifteen minutes from time. Llorente clattered Manquillo on the left edge of the area, gifting Newcastle a chance to deliver a dangerous ball into the box. Instead, Shelvey went for goal. His low curling effort bounced aver the despairing dive of Meslier before nestling in the far corner of the net. Clearly rattled, the Frenchman spilled a cross at his near post just minutes later which Llorente had to clear off the line. Even the introduction of Joe Gelhardt did nothing to lift Leeds spirits, but having already gone a goal down, and the clock ticking on, it was too little too late. 27% of Newcastle’s points won in the Premier League this season have come against Leeds.

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It's not clicking for Roberts

Phil Hay has suggested that sending Tyler Roberts out on loan may reduce the pressure he is under to perform! The former Chief Football Writer for the YEP, also stated that the 23yo needs regular game time, something which he has never had at Elland Road.

"Saturday isn’t a defeat we can hang around his neck (Roberts) but it is another game in which his impact has been mediocre/disappointing and I don’t feel as if his situation is doing anyone any good. You need consistent impact from players and while it does come from Roberts from time to time, it doesn’t come often enough. He must sense public opinion and to an extent, that must be in his head. It just doesn’t feel like this one is going to work."

"I can’t argue with the potential value of a loan for Roberts. It takes him out of the firing line, it reduces the pressure on him and it potentially gets him regularly starts (which he doesn’t look like getting at Leeds). He’s had 100+ games for Leeds now and it’s not clicking."

Would you send Roberts out on loan, or with their injury crisis, still in full effect, do they need him at Elland Road. Is this his last chance?

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Kinnear keeping close eye on the purse strings

In his latest program notes, Leeds Managing Director Angus Kinnear made it clear that any transfers in January would have a knock-on effect with how much business they would do in the Summer. He also claimed that big money signings do not guarantee that they would be that much better than our current stock of Under 23's, but could block their development.

“We are confident we are building a long-term competitive advantage in the recruitment and development of world-class young talent,” “Central to this strategy is our ability to promise and deliver to young players a fast track to first-team football, as well as a culture where there is a belief in the process and where the players, irrespective of age, are trusted to deliver on the Premier League stage.

“This strategy clearly impacts our evaluation of transfer targets, where our analysis indicates that many January options, requiring an eight-figure investment, would not be a material improvement on the current performances of emerging players such as Bate, Hjelde and Joe Gelhardt.“Moreover, signing other options would block such youngsters’ development and would offer nowhere near the long-term potential.”

“Simultaneously, any January activity has an opportunity cost on more optimal moves in the summer window,” “As a board, we have always tried to be transparent with supporters in the belief it is better if our recruitment strategy is disagreed with by some fans, rather than misunderstood by many.”

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Good morning all

The last 20 minutes were awful. I'm a fan who stays in the ground until the Leeds players take their plaudits from our fans. I said to my mates around me Newcastle are going to nick this, the writing was on the wall as we were so disjointed.

You could feel the concern as soon as Roberts came on, like many of our players he tries to do too much rather than playing a simple ball, then Llorente clatters into their attacker (may have been St Maximin), the wall was poor as it usually is, making it easy for Shelvey to curl ball round only for our young talented keeper to sadly mess up!
We don't lose to screamers in general, the goals we concede are usually messy & are created down to our own making in our error littered game.

Then we immediately decide to throw Gelhardt on through sheer desperation I guess, as we weren't prepared to send on our best opportunist kid at 0-0 when the game was crying out for something different long before the barcode's goal. It took six whole minutes to get Joffy on as we deliberated with his substitution because Newcastle had a couple of corners & by that time we couldn't retain the ball or clear our lines, that's how feeble we had become after dominating the game. So our kid had fifteen minutes to rescue us yet again, you know at least several of those final minutes are going to be wasted by the opposition ffs., sorry to be critical but this type of action is not fair on our young starlet.

Also by the time Joe came on, Raphinha & Harrison our creative threat had run themselves ragged for 80 minutes & have little left in the tank to give!

Sorry Marcelo, I didn't understand your thinking one bit on what was a miserable afternoon for our fans.

At least the Toon army had a good day.

 

Problem Mr Kinnear is that we have only one central midfield option coming through in Bate but Rodrigo, Forshaw, Klich, Dallas all over 30 and Tyler Roberts not performing. In a couple of years all 4 need replacing and Bate can't do everything. Roberts isn't the answer.

What's the plan? Sign a 12 year old that might eventually break through in 2030 to replace 39 year old Klich?

Club obviously don't have the budget for signings. That's fine but don't feed us that bullshit Kinnear. Just say we don't have the funds to get who we want and move on.

 

why sign dan james if we needed players for centre midfield.i dont like being fed bullshyte and the club thinking i will believe it.the only way these younger players will be ready sooner is if we are relegated.but hey bamford and phillips will save us .by the time they are fit we could be in the bottom three.

 

Morning all

Bottom line is Bielsa has the final say on signings, if he has turned down central midfield options in the past and agreed on Dan James yet another winger it's at his feet, I can't blame Radz in the slightest, we have spent a lot of money since our return and remember season one we had no fans in the grounds. If Kinnear was to speak the honest truth or discuss what gets talked about at boardroom level I bet they are asking the same questions we do as to why Rodrigo, why James, why play them out of position, they must have concerns that Bielsa has wasted money but they can't even insinuate that or he'd be off.

Kinnears comments protect Bielsa and his team selection, he can't say we have £20m and every player Orta presents to Bielsa gets turned down because he believes they are not better than we already have.

I still think the minute Bielsa leaves Orta will bring in several players who he believes are good enough then it will be down to the new coach to get on with the job, a bit like when Bielsa first arrived.

Meslier - It's the dead ball situations and positioning he struggles with

 

Nice title header, Matt

I've often used the word 'calamity' when referring to our defending.

 

Meslier has faced more shots than any other PL keeper - that's down to the rest of the team. He gets exposed by their poor play.

 

I am still seething at this missed opportunity and despair that we are the architects of our own downfall far too many times.

How many dumb ****ing tackles and free kicks do we give away in and around the edge of the box to disastrous effect - Llorente pull your finger out and think about it.

No recognised goal scorer on the pitch all frigging season virtually - how the **** are we supposed to win games. James just falls over the ball so many times in the 6 yard box, Roberts is just a waste of time and has had far too many opportunities to disprove this.

So any spending we do now will impact what we can spend in the summer. If we don't resolve the creative midfielder role and the lack of striker we won't ****ing be in the premiership come the summer so what are our priorities???

Really, really ****ing annoyed.

 

Really thinking now that the james transfer fee quoted is a load of rubbish. Anyone got any info on his and morenos transfer fee clauses. Because i for one do not believe we are paying that much.
Kinnear is a feckin genius in stating if we spend now it will impact any summer spend. Well no ****t sherlock we thickos needed help with that one. I think that means no one is coming but hey gullible fans we did make bids.

 

Meslier made two excellent saves at 0-0 & 0-1

 

Summer means more options - more business is done then, so his statement makes sense in that respect.

 

I'm not convinced he made an error on that save - he was watching the two Newc players, expecting either of them to run in and divert the ball to his right.

 

I guess January is always going to be a strange transfer window when the manager never has more than 4 months left on his contract. Factor in that Bielsa won't play them until March because they are not up to speed - would you spend a fortune this month?

Really disappointed Hjelde didn't play, I think he has done really well on the two occasions I have seen him. The kids might be the future but they are also our now if we won't / don't sign anyone. Him at Left Back and Dallas back in midfield for Rodrigo would have made us a lot stronger imo.

Hopefully, we should have enough to be just about ok. 7 Points was a pretty big gap in the Championship and it should be bigger in the PL. One team may go on a run but it will be incredibly difficult for lots of the bottom clubs to suddenly start collecting loads of points because every game is so difficult. We still have plenty of games left where we will pick up points too. Saturday was really disappointing but we have picked up 6 points from our last 5 games, only Norwich below us match that, all of the others are less.

We all want to win and progress but, to my mind, certainly in financial terms and getting stability, 4th bottom is still as effective as promotion itself was.

Oh, and, morning all

 

Afternoon all,

In Bielsas next football seminar he will use that game as the perfect example of what happens if you don't put away your chances.

If Bamford had been playing Saturday I think we would have been out of sight by half time. Rodrigo, who is a natural goalscorer, was playing far too deep for me. If he had been in the area instead of James I think he would have scored.


Twitter was its usual cesspit after a loss. Roberts gave the ball away, Llorente gave away a completely unnecessary free kick and while he has credit in the bank Meslier wants a kick up the arse for not saving that. But which player for the blame and all the blame for the entire 90 minutes while actually only being the pitch for 20?

I saw a tweet that said when Roberts was getting ready to come on the whole mood of the crowd dropped and this caused the team to drop their performance.

I'm sorry but if this new breed of super fan who inhabit Elland road let that happen they need to piss off and support another prem team because they clearly don't get being a Leeds fan.

 

When Roberts was getting ready to come on, the whole mood of the crowd dropped.

Because the true Leeds fans know what to expect.

 

I wouldn't send Roberts out on loan



I'd give him away

And report him to trading standards

 

1r

Maybe they should get past their bias and judge him on his last three performances before injury.

Too many have decided he is the scapegoat and I hate to think what as miserable world they must live in if a sub can lower their mood like that

 

I didn’t see the game unfortunately so can’t really comment on the performance but I guess people see different things. On here it sounds like Rodrigo was ****, whereas on twitter some were saying he played really well but no one was getting onto the good balls he was providing. Likewise Llorente, one Leeds United site tweeted that he didn’t deserve to be on the losing side. What I would say was that I was surprised he changed the team that won last week. Hjelde at left back, Dallas in midfield with either Rodrigo or Joffey up top seems more balanced. You then leave Harrison / James to fight it out for left wing.

 

They are judging him on his past performances.

 

Which is kind of my point. Yes he has not been brilliant and I understand being unsure of him but his three most recent performances he has been close to the player we want him to be.

He is getting ready to come on Saturday and may have been up for the game before hearing 35000 people groan. That would deflate me.

So much for marching on together