Ricey

Still our best striker. He had a mare but I’d have left him on as every miss fires him up more.

That’s that then. After a long awaited international break nothing has changed. Slow, predictable football with no variation of play. Maresca should be rightly criticised for his part in today. Ndidi shouldn’t have started when he hasn’t trained, Faes is a liability and yet again a total lack of subs or tactical changes to try and turn the tide. How many times have we seen the opposition start to make subs from 60 mins onwards and then begin to take control. All the while we just sit back and change nothing. He isn’t learning.

They are coming at us, which in theory should suit us, but we are just devoid of any confidence or composure.

They would only be able to do the title winning kit without the Puma badges. Bearing in mind there was three of them on the shirt, I’m not sure it would sell that well. The FA Cup winning shirt however is surely a no brainer.

That sound you can hear is the barrel being scraped.

For the most part he's been fine at LB this season. His pace is essential to cover Vestergaard, especially tomorrow when Bristol City's gameplan will be to hit us on the counter.

Good job we've been highly cooperative with the authorities....

Weird match. I though tactically we were naive and defensively terrible, but through Chelsea’s ineptitude we got back into the game and gave it a good go. Crazy to play such a high line against Jackson, Sterling, Palmer and Mudryk. Even crazier to do it with Doyle instead of Justin. Maresca seems happy we didn’t change our style and gave them a good match, but they should have killed us by HT and ultimately it’s another match we’ve lost at the death. Without heavy investment or incredibly shrewd recruitment I really fear this style of play just won’t work if we go up.

Not playing Justin is really strange. High line and up against Palmer, Doyle just doesn’t have the mobility.

This ultimately is the problem. It’s a style that works scarily well if you have players that can maintain high possession in every match. If your squad contains a higher calibre of player than the opposition's it can work really well. Which is why it’s worked really well for us this season when our best players have been fit. However against teams with a similar or better quality of player, or if we lose a couple of key players, it can quickly become exposed.

It’s tactical suicide to play this high of a line, with huge gaps in between each defender and no protection in front of it. Add to that a half arsed press and two of the back four being painfully slow and you have yourself a recipe for disaster.

We are awful defensively, we just didn’t realise for most of the season because we kept the ball so well.

…and this is why I wouldn’t want Vestergaard in the PL.

Not sure if that’s optimism or pessimism.

Ipswich match will no doubt be moved to after the Semi. No doubt in the final week of the season.

It does…for 4 days until we play Southampton. I’d sooner Coventry didn’t have the distraction of the Semi and/or quite bad fixture congestion when they play Ipswich.

Bad for us as it means their match against Ipswich is moved.

Any first teamer who isn't going away for international duty will start. He won't want them going three weeks with no football. I can see him resting Faes and maybe Hermansen, but that's probably about it. Go strong and if the game passes us by, bring off Winks, KDH, Vardy etc later on in the game.

Makes you wonder why they prioritised the training ground instead of the stadium.

Possibly, but presumably the new rules would take effect from July. We could have two breaches by then.

Could mean it makes it easier to avoid a 23/24 breach, but does mean that we’d be the only team with a points deduction (if we go up).

Yeah, that very much blurs the lines of the three year rolling period. What happens if they breach again next season? Another 2 points? 4 points?

Happy with a point considering how off it we’ve looked recently. The referee was awful. Same one as Ipswich away when he didn’t give the KDH penalty or send Harness off.

….and we’d be sat here actively wanting the points deduction to be this season, rather than next.

Why didn’t Leeds just stop playing at 1-0 and try to see it out? I don’t understand.