It seems to be a few years ago that Leeds United were living the dream and pushing their finances to the limit to realise that dream. Under Peter Ridsdale, the chairman at the time, that dream whilst financially living on the edge, eventually evolved into a nightmare. It was a massive gamble on part of the club chairman Ridsdale had taken out large loans against the prospect of gate receipts from Champions League games. In order for the gamble to deliver, Leeds needed success in the Champions league and this they failed to deliver. The massive decline then began starting with a call for cash resulting in the sale of Rio Ferdinand to rivals Manchester United for £30m: the rest is a chronicle of a near financially broken club spending the next ten plus years trying to survive and start to dream again whilst offering short-term temporary employment to many would be managers. Leeds won their first Championship game of the season at Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday and manager Garry Monk responded by making 11 changes for the game against the Hatters. Our manager Nathan Jones, made a couple of changes bringing in Smith for Cook and the returning Mullins for St-Cuthbert. Leeds had just about taken up their fill allocation of seats in the Oak Road end and although teased by the Luton choir, they gave their team excellent support during the game. Long suffering fan but to my mind good supporters who turn up and get behind their club. You know, it’s really a delight to see the away end crowded with support; simply adds to a cracking good atmosphere. Luton began the game well with plenty of possession and lots of pretty passing for a side from the basement league, easily finding players wearing the same shirt; all encouraging stuff. Leeds came back at Luton and took the lead with a peach of a strike from just outside the penalty area by Denton; Walton dived to his left but was never going to stop that one. Leeds almost doubled their lead with a lovely acrobatic shot from Kemar Roofe. Oh, how nice it would have been if Luton had landed Roofe from Oxford in addition to Hylton & Mullins; lovely player who would be a great benefit to our squad. For the Hatters, the problem as with Saturday at Stevenage was taking the few chances that came along; had we done that then we could well have beaten this Leeds team. Jack Marriott had two great chances in the game. The first came from a superb pass from Smith; yes, not a typo I did mean Smith. It was an ace of a 25-yard ball from Smith from within his own half that cut open the Leeds defence for Marriott to bypass the advancing keeper on the left yet, unfortunately Marriott hit the ball over the bar of the now unprotected goal and the chance had gone. Marriott in the second half then missed a great opportunity when running clear on the left side of the penalty area, putting the ball wide of the post. Great lad our Jack when on form but his goal-scoring touch has temporarily deserted him; this season he had missed quite a few from that left side of the penalty area. I guess he became overdrawn at the goal bank when he rattled in that eleven-minute hat-trick at Bedford in the PSF game. As the saying goes, form is temporary, class is permanent and once he bags a couple, he will be up and running I am sure. We also had a number of long range efforts from Marriott, Lee & McGeehan. McGeeham has now taken on the responsibility for free kicks within shooting range of the goal and from what I saw last night, he will prove very good at it. We did have other chances as well including one that fell to Vassell just before the end of the game; again once he gets a couple of goals, some confidence and self-belief, we may get a better impression of what he can offer in addition to pace. Overall, I felt we played very well, maybe a bit “England-like” with plenty of possession and probing and patience in abundance for a L2 club. For me, NJ has definitely got us moving in the right direction. One thing I noticed at both Stevenage and last night is this chip type ball over the defence for the striker to run onto. It nearly worked when used but all too often with through balls last night found our guys marginally offside; never mind, it will all fall into place. The positives: Nathan is developing an attractive side that really tries to play the type of football most of our supporters want to see even if the degree of patience shown by our style frustrates the minority who want us to “get at them”. McGeehan is really starting to look like the powerful advanced midfielder we all hoped he would be. The team genuinely do work for each other and yes, it is a team. A couple of bits to work on: Occasionally the crossing of the ball from corners or just on overlap is either under-hit or in the case of O’Donnell over-hit. More practice guys or somebody will take your place. Nathan really needs a strong word with Hylton about mouthing off to the referee; Hylton needs to remove that from his game right away. A few thoughts on individual performances: Walton: I don’t think he could do much about the opening goal; maybe he could have been positioned a little better but it was a cracking shot. O’Donnell: had his moments but again his crossing tended to let him down Rea: some good tackling sometimes a bit robust with it and possibly fairly lucky to avoid a yellow. Mullins: played well at the back in my view; not the fasted guy on the pitch understands what’s going on. Potts: I thought he did well and although overlapping wing play is not his strongest point as yet (still working on that part of his game I suspect) he did fine. Lee: made some decent passes but for me, he is just too poor in the tackle to be in that holding position. Smith: made a couple of really good passes including the one that sent Marriott away in the first half but does he fit into our system of play? Gray: full of energy and has the ability to really get a telling tackle in. McGeehan: to my mind, he was outstanding last night; are we finally about to see the player we all hoped we had? Marriott: tried to find space all game and unfortunately missed a couple of chances you would normally expect him to take. Never hid, always kept looking for the ball. Hylton: fairly decent first third of the game but faded away. That might have something to do with the referee having some stern words with him: guess he wants to avoid a 4th booking. Cook(Sub): buzzed away and got involved. A couple of his corners fell a touch short. Pelly (Sub): we looked even better when his energy was introduced as a sub. Leeds had difficult holding him by fair means. Vassell (Sub): always wanted the ball but really needs that self-belief boost that a goal or two would bring him. Luton: Walton, O’Donnell, Potts, Rea, Mullins (C), Lee (Vassell 75), Smith, Gray (Cook 56), McGeehan, Hylton (Pelly 66), Marriott. Subs not used: King, Justin, McQuoid, Cuthbert. Leeds: Silvestri, Bamba (C), Roofe, Murphy (Phillips 58), Doukara, Dallas, Grimes, Jansson (Cooper 74), Hernandez (Mowatt 68), Coyle, Denton. Subs not used: Green, Ayling, Antonsson, Sacko. Bookings: Luton: Lee 53: Leeds: Grimes 1, Coyle 61 Attendance: 7,498 including a splendid 1,510 from Leeds. NJ post match interview & goals video:-
4 Comments
Flathatter
8/24/2016 04:16:11 am
Excellent report as usual Bill. I have never been a great fan of McGeeghan always considering him greedy and lacking in peripheral vision, but last night I thought he was much improved (Nathan effect?) and his free kicks were good without finding row Z. Sadly I also agree with the general consensus that Smithy is not up to it. I will never forget his "hot potato" pass at Peterborough!
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GreenWoman
8/24/2016 06:30:08 am
Enjoyed reading the report and my sentiments entirely on both accounts.
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Man on the moon
9/8/2016 06:01:22 am
Interesting.
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Hi there, welcome to my site where I chronicle various things about the Hatters, a team I have followed since the mid 60’sArchives
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