Sunbury Fox

Very good post. It's easy to be unduly influenced by the result of a game and forget there were lots of good things about last night.

Fair enough you've picked a stat that favours you. But tellingly your xG was only just over 1, most of which was the open goal that Rutter put away from the corner, so my point stands you didn't create much. Neither did we of course.

I guess that's why you had about 30% possession even before you asked scored, is it? Leeds basically pressed manically for the first 5-10 minutes of the first half and the first 5-10 of the second, and sat deep the rest of the time. Nothing wrong with that when you have a lot of pace up front and you don't really have ball players in central midfield. It was a good, solid away performance from you no doubt, but I don't think you can claim that it was an attacking masterpiece.

I have posted something similar in the tactics thread. I love watching this guy play so much, and he was brilliant in the first half, but it was like he turned into Rachid Ghezzal in the second half. And I don't think that Leeds doubled up on him particularly. We often got him the ball in acres of space to attack the already booked Byram, and he would keep laying off simple passes sideways or backwards, or ping loopy crossfield passes to Mavididi. Was this what he was instructed to do?

Great analysis as always but I would welcome your take on the lack of threat from our wingers in the second half. In the first half, as I expected, both wingers were beating their full backs with ease; it was clear full back is Leeds' biggest weakness (at least with Spence out injured). But in the second half they seemed far less direct. You say that Leeds doubled up on them but I'm not sure about that. They did starve the ball from Mavididi but Fatawu repeatedly had acres of space to get at Byram, a right back playing out of position at left back, who he'd taken apart in the first half and who was already on a booking. Summerville didn't really track back to help that much from what I could see either. And yet Fatawu turned into Rachid Ghezzal for most of the second half, playing simple passes inside or back to the defence, or pinging lofted passes to the other wing. I was imploring him to attack Byram more but it's like he was told to play differently and with more caution. We saw none of his usual chaos. Another big issue for me was that we had nowhere near enough people in the box when attacking towards the end. Nacho came so deep he was rarely in there, so even when the wingers did attack the full backs there were few options for them to hit in the middle. The guy behind me getting yelling for us to "get it in the box" but that would have been pointless as they had 5 defenders in there against 1 attacker. I'm not saying we should be booting it long but surely we need to pack the box with more bodies when we're a goal down towards the end of a game?

Lose this and there is a very good chance we could be 2nd in a week's time, given Ipswich's next 2 fixtures in that time. Crazy really, given that we've won 13 of 14 so far.

KDH has the most goal contributions in the league, though....

By front 5, I assume you are including their two 8s as well as the 2 wingers and strikers. So the match ups are, as follows? Ndidi v Kamara KDH v Piroe Mavididi v Summerville Fatawu v James Vardy v Rutter Which of these match ups do you think Leeds win?

So, one more win and we then hold the all-time record outright?

Does anyone know how many teams have won 12 of their first 13 second tier games? Do we now hold the record alone?

I know that everyone is free to do as they please, but I was shocked to see so many people leaving at 80-85 minutes during what was a very close, tense game. It reminded of games last season when we were losing by 2 or 3 goals and Amartey and Faes were doing their Chuckle Brother thing at the back.

I know we're a very good side at this level but it's unrealistic to think we're not going to concede even the odd clear chance to other teams. That doesn't mean we're poor defensively. As for this game, it will be really interesting to see how they set up. Mowbray is a very underrated manager in my view and his instinct is to play attractive, attacking football. But I suspect he'll approach this in the same way as when they played Southampton - give up the ball and play on the counter. In that game they had just 32% possession but created 6 big chances and won 5-0! This shows that they will be far more dangerous on the transition than the likes of Bristol City, Preston and Stoke, our last opponents at the KP.

Ferguson was a great manager but, let's be honest, Man U in that era benefited massively from a huge financial advantage over other clubs that no longer exists. A bit like Bayern in the Bundesliga, back then they could cherry pick the best players from even their closest rivals. The league is way more competitive now.

Amazing that we've won 8 out of 9 and we're still 2nd behind a team just promoted from League One.

It's still damning him with faint praise but this is the closest you've come to posting anything remotely positive about Wilf in his 6 years with us.

Bit harsh on Fatawu. I was expecting him to be very raw, but his decision making is surprisingly good. He could easily have had a number of goals and assists after his first few games for us, if it hadn't been for poor finishing by others or hitting the post himself. He should also have won us a penalty last night, had it not been for poor officiating.

The problem last night was that we didn't have the 3 players in the team who can play accurate longer passes out from the back when we are up against a high pressing team (Mads, Faes and Doyle). At Norwich, for example, we kept popping the ball over their high press and building from there. So I think the system is adaptable with the right personnel in the team. They just weren't playing last night!

Very excited about the prospect of Wrighty staying with us after all.

Hermansen and Winks are of course key to our capacity to play out from the back effectively but the ability of Faes and Doyle to switch play with long cross-field passes is also vital. Last night the wide CBs were Souttar and JJ, who don't really have that in their locker. They were playing safer, shorter passes to feet. This became very predictable and enabled Liverpool to press our midfielders more easily and it also meant we weren't able to exploit the huge swathes of space behind Liverpool's high defensive line.

Before the game today I really wasn't too fussed about the result, but after 10 minutes of listening to that tw@t on ESPN, I was frothing at the mouth and rabidly desperate for us to win at all costs, preferably in the most sh1thouse way possible so we could hear how salty he became. For a while my wish was being granted but sadly it wasn't to be in the end. Having to endure the horrifically biased commentary and being totally outclassed by a big 6 team on the pitch served to underline why being out of the PL is not all bad.

To be fair we are missing lots of key players but I agree we're not ready for promotion at this time. Better to build and get stronger and more consistent in the second division. Worcs are going to be whipping boys next season with so many of their best players leaving.

Want to see Fatawu start again, he's such a fun player to watch. Would be good to see how he does against top class opposition.

That is becoming more and more clear. Was missing in action as a captain last season when the club needed him most. Showed no leadership at all. Yes, he was injured a lot of the season but he could have been there visibly supporting the team like Coady did at the start of this season. Then there was his interview after the West Ham game at the end of the season when rather than apologising to the fans or showing some remorse he told Owain that all of the players had been saying goodbye to each other in the dressing room. WTF! He was a decent player for us up until his final season but it's no wonder we got relegated if so called leaders in the dressing room were behaving like this.

The promoted teams' combined record so far this season: P16 W0 D3 L13 F12 A38 P3

So excited by this lad. Looks a real talent. And what's great about him is that he's also a team player. Would be great to get both him and McAteer in from the start. Maybe we could try a front 3 of Fatawu on the right, McAteer on the left and Mavidi down the centre. Pretty sure that Mavidi has played there previously. Reckon those 3 together would be total chaos!