Well, that was another disappointing result in a game that we should be winning or certainly doing better. Brighton worked us out pretty quickly and we had no fluency about our play. The early goal really helped them – and what a goal it was. It was a great move and Leeds couldn’t do anything about it.
I also thought Ben White was excellent for Brighton. He shored things up and got forward. He looked like he wanted to do well against Leeds and performances like that will really put him in the shop window for the future.
I don’t know if we were lacking in confidence or if there was a legacy from the FA Cup the week before? I know it was a completely different team to the one which lost to Crawley, but there wasn’t the usual buoyancy about them. One thing that is starting to concern me is that we seem to be making little changes all too often instead of sticking to what has got where it has.
Luke Ayling was playing with Liam Cooper at centre-back when he would have given us far more from right-back – and freed Stuart Dallas up more. We also had Jack Harrison on the right when the left is his best position. And Raphinha was on the left. Why didn’t we change that earlier? Why couldn’t the lads themselves get together and say ‘this isn’t working’?
The pitch wasn’t great, but that’s no excuse. Brighton were more physical. They had the likes of Dunk and looked more up for the battle whereas we tried to make things hard for ourselves at times by over-playing it. The best chance we had was a simple ball from Alioski for Pat Bamford.
It goes without saying that we missed Kalvin Phillips massively and when he isn’t playing the team looks a bit disjointed.. One thing that Leeds have done well this season is respond after a couple of bad results. It’s now three defeats in a row and three without a goal, but the next game up at Newcastle is over a week away and there’s plenty of time to prepare and come back out fighting.
- Dom Matteo
- January 18, 2021
- 5:28 pm
- No Comments
