There’s nothing like a poor Leeds perfrormance to put you in a bad mood pre-Christmas. I was looking forward to my bottle of Chateauneuf-Du-Pape tonight after a great win over our bogey team Barnsley. What I actually feel is completely pissed off with a performance that was so poor I really found myself questioning the manager and a lot of the team.
How many managers do you know would play a 5-3-3 wing back system with Danny fecking Pugh and Lee fecking Peltier as wing backs ? First Peltier. Worse captain ever (even worse than Butler and Aizlewood) and now is being reinvented as some sort of rampaging wing back. He’s so limited in his play its untrue and when it comes to defending he’s not right good at that either. Waste of space. Second Pugh. I really have to question the sanity of a manager who not only pick him in a team pushing for promotion but actually play him as a wing back. The guy can’t defend, has no pace and no skill. Granted he has a half decent left foot but the amount of times he got into great positions and just floated over an aimless cross was beyond frustration. He adds stability apparently !? Give it a rest, he adds bugga all and BMD should hang his head in shame if he thinks that this is the answer to our left sided crises. The 5 at the back is so blatantly not working, nobody knows who is marking who ? There are massive gaps all over the shop. Barnsley carved us apart in the first 30 minutes, not through creative, inventive play but through the massive holes and space that appeared on the left side of our defence. Jason Pearce is playing as a left back, Tom Lees as a right back and our Lithuanian (sorry still don’t know his name) is isolated as our only cenre back. The amount of times he was left one on one at the back was criminal. I like the look of the lad but in this system its all or nothing and he had to put in a load of reckless challenges , most of which to his credit he got away with. On other occasions he didn’t and Barnsley really should have taken the lead on more than one occasion. In midfield we look lightweight especially with 3 players. Mowatt, a player who I think has done ok in the games I’ve seen, didn’t look right from the start. He really looked all at sea and maybe he was injured ‘cos BMD dragged him off at half-time. With Mowatt having an off day it lies with Murphy and Austin to drag us along. That ain’t gonna happen is it ? and up front, the slowest combination of strikers in the country - Macca and Smith. What a partnership ? Yes they’ve scored goals but on this performance the partnership has no future whatsoever. Back to the first half .... yes we had chances. Actually, I should say Matt Smith had chances. Two very straight forward finishes. The first a Danny Pugh ball (his best and only decent cross of the game) fell kindly and Smith looked in control. He shot directly at the advancing keeper who made a good save (according to people sat near me in the NE Upper). I’d say it was a bad miss. then he was put through again by a great intelligent ball from Macca, he was weak and scraped the ball into the keeper’s arms. Today, Smith made some of Becchio’s performances look sharp. He is flat footed, tall but actually pretty shit in the air and in terms of ability he looks like a centre half. Actually that’s being unkind to most centre halves. John Pearson is the nearest comparison I can make, again emphasing my point that you can be shit but still score goals in this league. It really means feck all. Becchio is the ultimate example of this point. In that first half, it has to be said that Barnsley were the better side. They played football, they passed the ball, they had a bit of pace and skill up front. We were hopeless and most of the time despite playing on paper what looks like a progressive 5-3-3, what we actually did most of the time is punt it long to the hapless Smith in the hope of a knock down. You have to ask serious questions about that first half performance. We made Barnsley look good and they are not. Their no 11 - a 4ft player with blonde hair looked like Lionel Messi next to Austin, Murphy and Mowatt. We really lack the basics at times. We did have other chances. In fact the best chance should have been handed to Macca. A decent bit of play from us, ended with Murphy only having to play a simple one-two type ball in to Macca and he was in, Murphy pathetically over cooked the pass and it went astray. Macca just looked at Murphy, arms in the air and head shaking. I’m not surprised, it was a pass that anyone with any level of ball control should have made, however 1 million pounds of shit was unable. The only compliment I can play BMD today is that he made changes at half-time and didn’t do the Simon Grayson 51 minute, programmed change. Peltier (awful) and Mowat (even worse) were replaced by Byram and Tonge. Barnsley stopped playing second half which meant we had more possession but ironically that actually made us look even worse. We didn’t have a clue, no idea. Tonge, who was obviously not match fit actually did do ok, managing to make their keeper make a save and distribute the ball effectively. Ok, not a match changing contribution but compared to the other midfielders around him this was a vast improvement. Pugh and a decent shot parried over by their keeper and we had a few moments whoch really resembled panic or their part in their area. They were lucky with a lot of clearances and the ref did his best to really ruin the game. The ref must have been 3ft tall and was one of the worse I’ve seen for a while. Smith was knackered, Macca was sick of running down blind alleys and Byram, who has come on, despite getting forward more, put a couple of Row Z crosses. Pugh then treated us to one of the worse corners in history. He trickled it into the side netting, I’d be surprised if it even came into play. Why is he taking corners ? Barnsley had a man sent off for a bad challenge on our Lithuanian but it didn’t matter ‘cos that just meant they got more men behind the ball and made it even harder for us. We were struggling anyway. So listening to BMD’s post match interview he said all the right things again. Poor match, these things happen, we moved up a place, let’s take that and let’s move on. Sorry Brian, I can’t. That was £31 of pure shite. Your tactics are a disgrace and the players you have brought in are not good enough to get us promotion. Sort it out. Scores: Kenny - 7. Didn’t do anything wrong. Kept a clean sheet despite some poor defending in front of him. Peltier - 2. All of the shop from the start and showed nothing going forward as a wing back. Come on Peltier as a wing back ? Pugh - 3. One good cross, one good shot then just your typical Danny Pugh performance. Pure shite. Come on , Danny Pugh as a wing back ? Lithuanian - 6. I think this guy has talent but he needs another defender close to him. He was exposed badly but actually came through most situations. Come on Brian ! Lees - 6. Sensible defending most of the time. Pearce - 5. Don’t think he knows where he is playing in this formation. His he at left back ? cos Pugh ain’t helping him ? Sort it out Brian ? Austin - 4. Distribution poor, worked hard as always but as usual just showed his limitations which are many. Murphy - 3. He is getting involved more, he put himself around a bit andput in 1 or 2 decent tackles but how many times does he give the ball away and how many times when in a great position does he fail to make the final pass. I’m hoping he’ll turn into Steven Gerard but actually we have to face reality he really isn’t that good. Mowatt - 2. Really poor showing. I don’t think he was right. Smith - 4. Donkey. Macca - 5. Some good moments but can’t do it on his own due to lack of pace. Subs: Tonge - 5. Was probably the best midfielder on show. That’s how bad we were. Byram - 4. Very rusty. I’d drop Murphy and play Byram in this position. Poleon - 5. Also looked rusty, not surprising. BMD - sort it out Brian. Terrible tactics for that team and those players. Crowd - 31k - robbed and loud boos at the end. What a great start for Christmas. Bottle of CNP should sort it. Happy Christmas, Rich _______________________________________________ Leedslist mailing list Info and options: http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/leedslist To unsubscribe, email leedslist-unsubscr...@gn.apc.org John 'Grampa' Sykes Rest In Peace old lad 28th Oct 1938 - 12 Nov 2013 MARCHING ON TOGETHER
