Unfair on messier. Would give him an 8 for having to watch that up close.
James a 4 very generous. No one worth more than a 2 today. Sorry to say I don't think Dallas will come close to matching his performance of last year.
The only good thing from today was our 4 best players weren't involved in that sh!tstorm.

Talking about JKA I almost wish he had come back after watching Rodrigo today.
Like you say this game was probably a one off and we will bounce back when our players come back.

Maybe unfair on Meslier but I wasn’t giving more than a 4. James I thought did at least create a chance for us with his pace and did some good defensive work.

I don’t think today was down to the players.

We have been coached brilliantly by Bielsa to get the most of this group of players by playing very repetitive patterns. We have a pretty strict method of build up down the outside channels. Southampton had a very good plan of how constantly trap us during the build up and block all options.

At no point did we try anything different. We either need better players that are much more capable of retaining good possession while pressed or have an alternative plan.

I still do not think we will be relegated. We are still better than a few teams in this league. When we have less injuries we do have much better players to come in too. However this was the worst performance under Bielsa and is the first time I have started to worry.

With regards to recruitment. I agree completely. Fans make out as though other clubs never get a wrong transfer. But there’s not a single club out there without a long list of let downs. Players are humans and there’s so many external factors that it’s impossible to know a transfer will definitely work. I’d also say that any criticism of our transfer strategy should be predominantly aimed at Bielsa and not the owners. Bielsa is the one refusing the players that get away. He’s the one that wants a new squad. And he’s the one that desperately wanted James above all else.

And the club are 100% right to back him.

As should we as fans. Because while he has faults and gets things wrong. It’s ridiculous to think that 8 games into a season we should already start to doubt the man that almost single handed ou got us here. It’s actually a properly entitled and immature opinion. It makes people sound like spoilt brats.

I have to agree with the tactics today. We were so far off with plan A I did hope we may change something half time or even earlier. To be fair we did start the second half better but once again got countered with relative ease.

Squad is far too small, we can't rest place, drop players out of form and can't throw strikers on when losing. We knew Phillips would be out with knocks and fatigue from England duty (Euro's) We got lucky in the championship with the break mid season as we rested players, regrouped and hit the last few games hard.

Should have signed OBrien or Cajuste for midfield options for games like today. Only 1 left back at the club is ridiculous also, Dallas missing from midfield (player of the season) because we haven't got a spare left back. Why didn't we hit the loan market? We reportedly turned down 10 England cap Harry Winks ffs, my heart breaks at the thought of having another ben white episode and having a 40 million player on loan for a season 😭

Have a small squad, but fill it with experienced players atleast, if we cant afford experienced players on the bench, then we don't deserve to be in this division

No plan B, no goals in the team minus Raphinha and Bamford

If you enjoy championship football, stick your heads back in the sand

I think we always struggle to change to the 3-3-1-3, even when we have our first eleven available, so to try it with such a second choice team was always liable to be tactical suicide. A midfield pivot of Klich and Roberts ffs. I would probably have given Klich and Harrison lower in your ratings tbh.

I don't really know what much more Bielsa could have done with today's team. I think today, Struijk should have been set up to play CDM and drop back into CB when we were on the defensive. Not sure if that was how it was meant to be, as we didn't see enough of Klich dropping deep, and too often resorted to longer punts into midfield, and really thought we struggled to break the lines on a consistent basis.

If Forshaw was at his best then he would have started and Klich would have played instead of Roberts ahead of him. This would have made us much better in the build up phase. Hence why Bielsa made that change despite us needing a goal. If we can’t progress the ball out of our own half it’s pretty irrelevant who we have on the pitch to score in the opposition half. However Forshaw is a long way short of being his best and it’s not certain he will ever get close to his best again.

MB’s strengths and weaknesses are largely the same attributes. The stubborn adherence to his strategy etc. It can be frustrating but only a fool would not be hugely grateful for everything he’s done to date.

He thrives on the small squad flexible players rotating concept. Yet it only takes a few key cogs out of the system for things to unravel. This is true of all team sports to some degree but it’s especially true of bielsaball. Faith is spot on… When you have set plays and methods to create overloads to advance and build possession, if it fails because either a key player is missing or an opposition manager wins the tactical battle or simply has a better class of player to impose their strategy it can look like every player is having a terrible day. In a way they are, but what you’re witnessing is players out of their comfort zone, under pressure because their usual outlet isn’t there.

This Leeds side generally struggle against sides who press well, sides who actively squeeze our wide men high up the pitch to prevent the simple out ball AND whenever Phillips isn’t playing. Combine the 2 and you get what we saw today. We have no one literally fit to lace his boots in his position, he holds possession, sets tempo starts attacks AND is always available to receive the ball.

Agree with Lubo on 3 at the back. Bielsa likes it because he demands a spare centre back so aligns to the opposition, but we never look at our best with it. If I was an opposition manager whose side could play 2 up front I’d always do so against Leeds… it’s almost a free invitation to disrupt our play. It feels like we react to the opposition rather than impose ourselves on them…

We coped better last season with players out. We didn’t necessarily win those games, but we still played well, related chances and had few concerns with performances.

The difference this season? These players seem to be totally out of form:

Dallas
Klich
Harrison
Ayling (pre injury)
Rodrigo

Add to that, poor showing today by Shacks and the usual headless chicken showing from Roberts.

Nobody on the bench to make an impact.

Our best players have been carrying the rest this season and today we saw what happens without them all.

If we sell Ralph, KP or Bamford we’ll be sunk on present form.

The core issue for me is Bielsa. His inflexibility is costing us this season. Teams understand us better this year and we are unable to adapt to that. Struijk in the Phillips role is a disaster, can we put Llorente there instead and have Struijk at CB? It might not win the game for us, but at least it gives us some fluency in front of defence.
It’s a worrying sign that posters are beginning to celebrate Bielsa’s achievements. Save that for when he leaves or when we get relegated. For now, he needs find some momentum and guile.
As for posters who say this was our worst ever performance under Bielsa, I have one word to say. Wigan. He brought us back from that. He can bring us back from this.

I would say yesterday was as bad as Crawley away and is definitely in the top 2 or 3 for worse Bielsa team performances. The Wigan defeats hurt more but we didn't play as badly as yesterday and we were most fortunate to only lose one nil.
I will take into account the five first team starters that were out and cut Bielsa some slack but in our next 2 league games against Wolves and Norwich I want to see more balance and more energy with an end product that hopefully results in us getting at least 4 points.

awful game....move on

I thought the four players who were poor yesterday were Rodrigo, Klich, Dallas and Struijk, yes others weren't great but when your 4 and 8 are off then it impacts the attacking players, worry is we havent strengthened at 8 and 10 and it shows and when our next best option is a 15yo boy it spells trouble unless we are at full strength
Next two games are massive,

Southampton played an aggressive pressing game very well; we surrendered in too many one-on-one situations, particularly in midfield. Rodrigo was comprehensively bossed in attack while Llorente and Struijk were terrorised at the back. I have no idea why Bielsa continues to persevere with Roberts. We gave away possession far too easily when we actually had it and on those rare occasions when we did have it, we seemed only to play it back to Meslier. Harrison should have buried the only chance we had.

We were pi$$poor yesterday. Absolutely gutted and totally pi$$ed off as I thought we'd start turning this around after the Watford game.

But we must give credit to Southampton - they dominated the entire game and should really have had three or four. Redmond was excellent as was the giant centre back and the young lad from Chelsea at right back.

The more I read comments the more it seems many folk in here didn’t even watch the game 😆.
Fair enough folk can make general observations of how the season is going but don’t make long winded opinions on the game if you didn’t even see it.

Am I the only one not fussed at all? When liveroool had VVD literally 50 % of the pre-match and post match talk was build on excising them for not being at full strength. Fact we had SIX first team players out is massive for me. Confident we’ll finish middle table. Yes we were poor, but generally the games we’ve played this season we’ve done well - manu and Liverpool apart obviously.

The worry is that should Rapha, Philips, bamford and Llorente get injured for the long haul we’ll struggle - but for now think we’ll start picking up points and climb up the table. People need to calm the f down

**Excusing

Yesterday was worse than Wigan in my opinion. If I remember right did we not score first in that one and end up losing 2-1? Yesterday we never troubled their defence at all. Their goalie could have had a day off for all the work we put his way. 0 shots on target in 95 mins says it all. We were lucky that Southampton are goal shy as they could have scored many more.

We were missing most of our best players, but such an abject performance against, let's be honest, not one of the best sides in the division has to be a major concern

Well, I did watch it and I wish I hadn't cos I'm extremely depressed today!

Yeah lots of seniors out of action yesterday but even so, that was truly dire.

comment by Jaz63 (U8369)
posted 2 minutes ago
Well, I did watch it and I wish I hadn't cos I'm extremely depressed today!

Yeah lots of seniors out of action yesterday but even so, that was truly dire.
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Was other folk talking about struijk not been good enough for cdm despite him not actually playing there.

comment by Kebablegs (U17699)
posted 7 hours, 30 minutes ago
The more I read comments the more it seems many folk in here didn’t even watch the game 😆.
Fair enough folk can make general observations of how the season is going but don’t make long winded opinions on the game if you didn’t even see it.
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I obviously was a bit impatient with this after full time yesterday. And I should have been more polite.

But it is frustrating to realise you are discussing problems and solutions with fans that don’t watch the game.

Everyone has opinions and there’s so many perspectives. But Struijk playing CB yesterday isn’t an opinion. It’s a very basic fact. And a really straight forward observation at that.

No one on here has anything close to a full understanding of the sport and what it’s really like. Mainstream analysis doesn’t help in that it’s dumbed down so much. And especially with MOTD it’s often just nonsense. Also myths like ‘it’s the biggest crime in football to not beat the first man at a corner’ don’t help either. The best corner is often the one that just skims over the first mans head at pace. Which is why it’s common to get it very slightly wrong and not beat him. However doing that gives you a much better chance of scoring than just lifting a ball into the centre of the box. Yet the cliche is still just accepted as gospel.

Struijk definitely played cb yesterday. Whether we needed 3 CBS is another matter. We definitely looked lost in midfield with just Klich and Roberts in there.

I'd love to see Shackleton get a run in cm if Dallas is at lb and Drameh get a run at Rb. We need three cms in there or we get completely overrun there. Not sure Forshaw is up to it sadly.

Many teams will have noted how we do with that formation and tend to lose the midfield with no outball and go with the two up top so that we do. I bet we keep doing it though.