Well, Thoughts now

[pete1967b]

Surely they ALL deserve credit for working hard enough to win the game, despite not playing well.

Correct....

[WTF11]

Its a 46 game season ffs, at this stage not giving credit to players for this match beggars belief. Dont bother replying because i wont respond..

And Barnsley, facing relegation and having played in just as many matches, nearly beat us at home in a game where promotion was at stake. Read other comments and see where credit is being given, and there isn't much aimed at Leeds, but then the comments didn't come from me, so wouldn't attract the kind of response I am accustomed to.

Respond, don't respond, wtf.

[MrsORichSenior]

It’s hard to win any game in this league. That’s the truth. There’s a fine line between winning and losing. I think unfortunately we saw a lot of those fine lines this year, but the teams that win, they do it with consistency.

They do it with improving as the season goes on. They do it with smart football and they have that edge in certain situations where they find a way to win no matter what. I would say the teams that don’t win in this league don’t have that consistency. They beat themselves and certain situations where just things that come up where they can’t find a way to win.

IMO,the game last night was a reflection of consistency - winners or losers is a fine line in life and sport.

The club as a whole have learned a lot as have I but tomorrow is another day to learn even more - it's how you want it and Leeds badly wanted it more often than not and obviously learned from last season as a unit throughout the club,IMO.

MOT

[leedsutdman]

For me I put a lot of that poor performance down to mental stress nothing else probably with thoughts of last season, I expect us to be fired up for the Derby game. Even Bielsa looked like he was going to have a heart attack before during and after the game. I was the same watching it, I've never been so nervous ever, God only knows how the players felt. Credit it to them for holding on.

[LeedsFTW]

Just want to point out that people may gave missed that last night's game was a local Derby, as such, form goes out the window and just about anything could gave happened.

We came out the right side of it, regardless of performance.

[spaldy]

Barnsley played us well both times we played them this season. They played both to win and caused us problems. A credit to them. They don't look like a bottom three team. Soemtimes we look "bad" because the other team is causing us problems.

we've played some absolute crap teams in this league. 10 men behind the ball the entire game and hoofball on a long ball hoping to score a goal on the counter. Boring as watching the Aldi truck unload on a saturday night. It's sad these teams get rewarded with another year in the championship while teams that actually try to play to win no matter who the competition is get relegated.

[OldWhiteTaff]

I'm probably going to get slated for this, but I think a big factor in last night's struggle was MB's approach to the game. In all the previous games where we've missed KP Bielsa has just moved White into the DM role and kept the formation intact. I think we'd have been much more comfortable if he'd done that again last night, rather than the weird back 3 with Ayling at the centre, which unbalanced us from the word go.

Als, and dare I say it, MB panicked. Firstly in the first half with his constant tinkering with our formation, and then in the 2nd half when he subbed Harrison for Strujik. I'm not saying Strujik played badly (he did very well after his initial mistake), but for the 5 minutes just prior to Harrison coming off we'd had 3 or 4 clear chances to break away, and I'm sure that if Harrison had stayed on a little longer we'd have got the 2nd goal, and then it would have been much more comfortable. But subbing Harrison for Strujik gave a clear message, we hang on grimly to what we've got, and invited pressure because our options for building any kind of attacking phases was reduced to virtually zero.

But who cares really, we did hang on, we got the 3 points, and hopefully we'll have regained our composure and confidence and can get the job done on Sunday regardless of other results.

[cherrypie7]

I'm probably going to get slated for this, but I think a big factor in last night's struggle was MB's approach to the game. In all the previous games where we've missed KP Bielsa has just moved White into the DM role and kept the formation intact. I think we'd have been much more comfortable if he'd done that again last night, rather than the weird back 3 with Ayling at the centre, which unbalanced us from the word go.

Als, and dare I say it, MB panicked. Firstly in the first half with his constant tinkering with our formation, and then in the 2nd half when he subbed Harrison for Strujik. I'm not saying Strujik played badly (he did very well after his initial mistake), but for the 5 minutes just prior to Harrison coming off we'd had 3 or 4 clear chances to break away, and I'm sure that if Harrison had stayed on a little longer we'd have got the 2nd goal, and then it would have been much more comfortable. But subbing Harrison for Strujik gave a clear message, we hang on grimly to what we've got, and invited pressure because our options for building any kind of attacking phases was reduced to virtually zero.

But who cares really, we did hang on, we got the 3 points, and hopefully we'll have regained our composure and confidence and can get the job done on Sunday regardless of other results.

Completely agree. With all the above. Weird about Bielsa. All season, he has consistently sent out an attacking team. After match, he said that his decisions were due to Barnsley subbing out defenders for attackers.

[bathlad61]

We scraped through, got the ***** 3 points, but last night really highlighted, to all ( i hope ) the lack of quality back up players, in most areas.
CB, DM, and a Striker to start with.
MB"s constant re-jigging players & formations, could have been mega costly, but we held tight.
Strange that Strujik, after hardly kicking a ball for the 1st team, was involved in such an important game - but he looked pretty decent.

[cherrypie7]

Last season, with 2 games to go, Norwich 88 pts, Sheffield United 85 pts, Leeds 82 pts. Norwich needed 1 point to go up. Interestingly, needed 3 to go up as champions because of better goal diff. So, Leeds actually doing relatively better than Norwich last season in spite of West Brom's form throughout this season. Shows how good the Blades were last year.