18 Sep 2021 09:57:38
Yes, our finishing was not good last night, BUT bottom line is we were once again shafted you the officials last night. Everyone except they could see that Dan James was fouled in the box. Not usually one to quote the words of Gary Neville, but as he said, in real time (as Dean would have seen it) it looked a pen, and in slow motion ( as VAR should have seen it) it was a stonewall pen) . If that’s given, and if Bamford scored it, it would have been a completely different game. Less than 25 mins gone and Newcastle 2-0 down, the crowd were bad at 1-0, and would have completely lost it, with Bruce, Ashley and the players. It would ha e been a long way back for them. With the pen not given their players and crowd knew they’d got away with one, and thought it could be their night, both were very much lifted by that.

Conversely, we would have been buzzing at 2-0, and Bamford’s confidence would have been raised - he seems badly affected by his England experience. I’m pretty confident we’d have scored a few more by the end of the night. As it was, our players knew they’d been shafted again and lost focus, snatching at chances, headless in defence and once again giving the ball away needlessly.

It’s disappointing seeing people slagging off Dallas - we still don’t know what personal matter led to his withdrawal from NI duty, and it may be that whatever it was has taken the edge off his performance.

There seems to be some criticism of Dan James, even to the point of saying Tyro offered more when he came on. The lad has only just signed for us, and had just one week training with the squad and under Bielsa. Even so, he should have got an assist in his first full game, through the pen that wasn’t given, and hared back to make a perfect and potentially goal saving interception in our own box just as Willock (with two other Leeds players trailing in his wake and failing to get in a challenge) was about to shoot. No other player in our squad would have had the pace to get back and make that challenge - and his evident determination to do so should be recognised.

I was surprised that we didn’t make more effort to target Ritchie once he’d picked up that early yellow. Raphinha could certainly have tried to run him more often, to induce a second yellow, and it seemed Bielsa possibly missed a trick by not putting Summerville on that side when he came on, to run him ragged.

Putting Summerville on the left gave Firpo a third wing partner in just one game (his fourth overall) which can’t have helped him as he continues to get to grips with the system. And yes, of course they scouted Firpo, rather than just picking him up ‘cos he was playing for Barca. They’d been following him since he was at Real Betis, where he was playing very well.

One positive is that Rodrigo had a decent game. Let’s hope he is able to build on that. It was also good to have Klich back in. I don’t think we had previously been made aware that his absence was c.v. related. Also a positive that we didn’t actually lose the game, which could have been very damaging, particularly with injuries seemingly continuing to stack up.

1.) 18 Sep 2021
18 Sep 2021 12:36:05
A well balanced post Clu


Mike Dein (sheepishly looking away after observing the blatant penalty) and VAR were a disgrace, more stains on the current lack of integrity of the EPL. It has never been so bad/ corrupt,

In the 90s and early 2000s the refereeing in the 1st division and then EPL was generally very good : Leeds certainly got a lot of penalties each and every season.

2.) 18 Sep 2021
18 Sep 2021 12:39:14
Fair point too about Dallas re his personal circumstances

and he deserves plenty of patience as the previous 2 seasons he has been one of our best players.

3.) 18 Sep 2021
18 Sep 2021 13:35:02
Agree with lots of your post clue, but not about the players heads dropping because they had been shafted

For me that's an excuse for the poor play in the final third . We have been devoid of creativity up there for a fair while and saying the lads head dropped over an event is wrong.

Anyways we move on and we all hope the same hopes for next game . ALAW.

4.) 18 Sep 2021
18 Sep 2021 14:59:50
In simple layman’s terms, we failed to take our chances and we failed to control Saint-Maximins. Some great saves by Meslier, going to be one of the best.

5.) 18 Sep 2021
18 Sep 2021 16:21:04
Chris - I didn’t say our player’s heads had dropped, but rather that they lost focus. Up to that point, our play had almost been back to the kind of level we came to expect last season, more focused and purposeful. After that decision clarity of decision making seemed to descend to the level we had seen to date this season. Not making excuses for them, as that shouldn’t have happened whatever occurred in the match.