Leeds Utd v Southampton Matchday Thread

If all these lower league teams can up their game when they play us. One wonders why this supposed collection of better players, cannot so the same to a team bereft of form and indeed players.
Bielsa has to address this.

Side note is Ortas transfer policy bad? Or is Murderball too much??

get over ali......why did we let viduka go........ffs move on

we were so poor today

When you start with effectively 8 of 9 academy kids on the bench, the other being an injury ravaged midfielder...You kind of see where the issue is

There is a serious lack of quality and depth and if I'm honest, if Phillips got a long term injury - he's that important we could go down.

That's not be knocking the club. We are still new to the PL. We had players overexceeding last year.

We are still crying out for a box to box midfielder to support Phillips and a Pablo type number 10 to run the game.

comment by Macca: Emily Bishop's love child (U8194)
posted 24 minutes ago
To me it seems that every week apart from v Watford we are outnumbered in midfield.
Is it too easy to suggest that instead of having 2 wingers we have an extra midfielder.
I would just play Raphina on the wing and put KP Foreshaw if he can stay fit, Klich and Shackleton in the middle if we can get cover at RB but the lack of midfield options is very worrying if Bielsa is not going to promote a couple of the U23s.

You would hope that a couple of loan midfield signings could be acquired in January but I'm not holding my breath.

Today everytime we lost the ball in midfield which I lost count of, it happened so often, there was a Southampton player swarming all over us and making it look like they had an extra player and it always looked like Southampton had an option to play the ball to someone while we didn't seem to have any options and any moves that we tried to get going would constantly break down.

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Our midfield is non existent when Philips is missing and we lose the battle in there every time. We see opposition centre halves bringing the ball out of their half almost to the edge of our box before they are challenged. Their midfielders have the time and space to pick up balls and run along the edge of our box looking for a one two or a little through ball.
Southampton are probably a bottom six side but we gave them confidence from the first minute and they bossed the game in every aspect. Their goalie had the easiest game of his life.
I am very worried at the way we look so short of ideas and even today dare I say fight.

I reckon 38 points will comfortably survive this season so looking at our potential victories then I can only see the bulk of our wins and draws being against the bottom 10 which means 9 clubs and so 18 matches of which we have played 4 and therefore need 32 points from 14 games.
Even being generous I would say 24 points would be amazing and give us 30 points in total.
So somehow we need another 8 points from top half teams, which leaves us 16 games to get those points.
Definitely achievable even after today's poor showing.

Looks like I didn't miss much Thanks for sticking with the thread Lads,

btw.....this result made a dull day dire and all you lot should try sitting in Victoria Park watching Ross County get beat by St Mirren ... Venison pie was nice though

Tickets were gifted to my G/Daughter by her school (no idea what she did to deserve that) and she wanted Grandad to take her to her 1st game I got some strange looks in my Leeds Shirt

Pretty sure the Leeds Players will be as peeeeed off as we are, but we go again. Bring on Wolves for the backlash

Come Onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn Leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeds!!!
MOT

You could ride a coach and horses through that lightweight non existent midfield and that more than anything is our main problem. Ball just comes straight back and we get penned in our own half. Would also like to see a bit more aggression out there and face up to teams coming at us and go toe to toe. Sure we had key players missing but the players let themselves down badly today and we had to be better than that.

We are solid relegation candidates along with Watford and Norwich. For whatever reason the team isn't firing and opening teams up like we did last year. For me, James and Rodrigo have been real disappointments so far this season.

Rodrigo has played really well in previous games, without necessarily having had the service, and how anyone can be casting judgement on James already, given the fact he has been thrown in at the deep end, is beyond me.