MDT v Baardiff....

Spot on mate.

As you say, the blank spots are obvious and starring us in the face.

Stats only confirm those even firmer.

There's also no need to beat 2/3 players every time or to beat the same player twice and stand still again. It's not about playing exibition stuff or galery play when your down.

Of course having a real striker in the box might perhap be helpfull.

Now, if only those in power could see...

Did you see Archie grey, Ampadu and Struijk after the second goal? All 3 of then looked at Meslier and say something... funny to watch.

Now, Meslier is not without his flaws but I can't see how he can be blamed for any of yesterdays goals.

Guess Pascal was trying to explain to him how he went from being 1 yard away from the eventual goalscorer to losing his man and diving in on a player already being covered.

Again a lack of communication and awareness.

Not been able to find it yet D2

Yes we certainly. And to get a point this late in the game feels good.

But, hopefully we'll now do the things that need to be done and have been starring us in the face for god knows how long.

Biggest + today beside the lovely shirt is young GRAY!

HAT OFF!!!

Grays conors were pretty dangerous.

Sometimes I hate being right. Feel very sorry for him and I'm afraid he'll be out for a long time.

Anybody here, see the dick head who said that now Cooper is injured he does not have to make a decision about excepting Saudi offer.

I almost threw my phone when I read that. I may not agree with coopers level of play but I never discredit his off field club behaviour as it has always been extremely professional.

Byram was more a real fullback.

Good goal and commitment from Cooper

Hjelde was poor in defending and so was Ayling!

The fact Ayling wasn't replaced had probably more to do with Cooper's injury.

For me Ayling has been poor in pre-season. He's always high up the pitch and bombing forward. He's good enough going forward, the defending remains the worry.

If you look at the first goal (after Sinesterra's give away), he's miles away from his man and both he and Pascal go and try to cover the first post. Ayling at fault for being out of position and then followed that up by not even closing down his man.

Second goal, sorry but for starters → that was non-defending from Hjelde.

At the back post there's 2 players for Cardiff and just Ayling trying to deal with them. Again he's not in a good position to intervene.

So a lot goes wrong in terms of defending, saidly it's not only Ayling.

There's little cover from the CB's who in general had to deal with just 1 striker. There's little cover from midfield either.

You've pointed to a lack of communication and when one looks at some of defending you're spot on. Not only that, there is apparently nobody around who senses the danger.

In the second half, on one of the rare counter attacks, Pascal was on the wrong side of the striker. So defensively there is so much to improve upon.

It Ayling starting point is to high and his age does not allow his legs to recover quickly enough.

I agree with everything you say Daniel - absolutely right.

Ampadu hasn't affected the game, Ayling hopelessly lost, James impossible to fathom, Meslier looks like a lost boy when Cardiff are in the box and needs to be replaced ASAP.

Cardiff will absorb this slow build up all day and just hit on the break.

The build up needs to speed up the ball movement and have space in the middle for Sinisterra and Summerville to play in. Also I take jameoff and move Sinisterra wide and bring Perkins up top with Gnonto

One left foot ? Measlier is the same mostly goes right ?

It always a gaping hole on our right side as our defender is way to high up as a starting position.

For the record Dremah had a hamstring strain. Greenwood is in a moonboot.

First goal Sinesterra gives the ball away (so careless), Ayling out of position. But we still had chances to clear the ball.

Second goal non-defending.

Sorry but with this kind of defence you can hardly expect to keep the opponents from scoring.

Sign a left back, play Cresswell and hopefully Drameh will return quickly from injury. Going forward it's looks pleasing and good on the eye (at times) but with no end product.

In midfield we're relying too much on young Archie.

Agree Daniel, but Sinesterra was at fault too for given the ball away for the first goal.

Don't know why we don't do it, but either one of the CB's or midfielders should cover the RB position or simply tell Ayling to stay in his position.

For the second young Hjelde got beat far to easy, that was very passive defending.

Now Drameh is out for while and Greenwood apparently for even longer.

Hopefully we can somehow snatch a draw from this game.

Drameh has been injured. Think he was 50-50 for being ready for today.

I'm guessing Greenwood is injured as well given he's been conspicuous by my his absence.

Got a hamstring injury

Struijk and Cooper are both central defender, it doesn't make much difference whether one is on the left or the right. They're interchangeable.

Good question. No real 9 or 10 in our line-up, but maybe Cry is the most obvious 10 and Willie the most obvious 9...

I try ICE.

But the realist in me tells me something of a different story.

Even before the season has really started we've got 8 players out injured.

On top of that we've let go of 9/10 players and brought in just 1 outfield player.

Club are working very hard to on transfer... Yep that may well be the case.

But we're now talking to Byram's agent to see if we can get anything done. Really?? Clubs must probably be lining in their dozens to sign him up.

we definitely have a knack of signing players who spend more time in the physio than on the pitch.16 players available before a ball is kicked is terrible...

No strikers available besides Perkins who hasn't played a minute of pre season with the first team ..

I feel sorry for Farke.

The recruitment has been way too slow by the board,it was obvious we needed a left back, dcm and a striker before we sold/loaned anyone and they only filled one of those positions and became obvious 2 weeks ago we would need a center back,we have parachute payments so go out and spend a few quid and sell one of our wingers to balance the books if needs be ..

Amazing really. Yes Perkins a good shout, or Joffy.

As things stand now I can't see us getting promoted either.

In terms of preparation and having settled/balanced squad, other teams are probably way ahead of us.

True we've shifted out a bunch of players on loan, not too bothered with most of them going. Rodrigo was always going to leave (even if we virtually gave him away).

The trouble for Farke is that he doesn't even know (or doesn't tell) how many from Adams, Sinesterra, Jimmy, Gnonto, Harrison to Meslier are still going to leave.

Then we've got injuries to Dallas (will we ever see him again and at what level?), Bamford, Rutter (not fussed really), Joseph, Adams, Harrison, Greenwood, Firpo (not fussed either), Drameh...

Some seem to think that training with 16 players is proof of the depth of our squad. In fairness, this seems correct when considering you need only 11 to start with. Think the rules permit us to start with just 7.

This would more or less even things up and at least give our opponents a fair chance.

A closer look at things should be telling enough, we're counting on youngsters like Gray, Gyabi & Joseph to run things (something Farke said he does not want to do just yet).

We're also going to have to rely heavely on the players like;

- Sam Byram, a player that last season found it difficult to find game time (played in 15 games) for Norwich (team finished midtable).

- Shacks had game time for Millwall but mostly used as a sub (real game time ± 17 games).

- Hjelde (has looked ok in preseason), played 13 games at Rotherham (team finished 6 from bottem).

- Poveda (looked very good in preseason) played in 24 game at Blackpool (team got relegated), but in real game time it comes down to 12 games, scoring twice & gave 1 assist.

Not saying those guys aren't any good or don't have a role to play, but it's not because they pull on a Leeds shirt they're suddenly going to become world beaters.

More importantly our squad is still very much unbalanced, overloaded with wingers! There is still no real, natural left back in the squad (baffling)!

We're missing a creative midfielder (Pablo style) and up top apart from the injured Bamford there is no goalscorer.

Yes, we've got is Joseph (but young & unproven at this level) and Joffy (not really done it at a good Sunderland team). Look at most of the promoted teams (Fulham, Norwich, Brentford, Bournemouth) over the last few years. They all had players scoring 20 or 25+ goals.

One could argue that we've got plenty of players who can score 10 goals or more. But as Farke said, we'll know at the start of next month.

Like TC, I hope we get promoted this season, because next season it will just become much harder to achieve.

As I said on another thread we'll soon find out.

I think we will lose more players yet, but I do believe we have others coming in - I'm not worried longer term, I just think it'll take too long to get things clicking for us to go up this season.

I'm not down about any of it - quite the opposite. If everyone can be patient, particularly the 49ers with Farke, then we'll have a fun ride back to the Premier League next season. By then we might even have some of the work done on Elland Road

Yes, I'm afraid there is a very good chance some of the players like Adams, Harrison, Jimmy & Gnonto will go.

If for example we could keep 2 out of those 4 that would be decent enough. Some of the money from those sales could perhaps help fill up some blank spots in the team.

However, not going up this season would probably mean that this season's loans would have to be repeated (bar Koch). As a result there won't be any substantial amount of money coming in.

And how many from the players (perhaps) staying this season would then give it another go at ER? Not forgetting we've got several players who's contracts expire at the end of this season, others like young Gray would only have 1 more year left.

Add to that, the money from the Premiership drops by 10%, making it harder still to stay within the FFP.

Regret to say I can't share your optimism.

But I do hope I'm proven to be very wrong.

But hey, perhaps the Championship is shxte and it turns out be a walk in the park.😁

Love the Gareth Bale comparison TC🤣😂😁👍

Scary situation if that could get us close to playing Dan James as 9. Gnonto or Gelhardt, or Perkins if needed, for me.

Perkins playing as 9 in u21's all preseason and scoring.

Good shout. Except I have not much confidence in James. Would prefer Sinisterra on the wing, and Poveda as no.10. MOT

I named 8 subs in error, but now it appears Shackleton is "done" at Leeds according to more and more clickbait sites, I'll shift him out.

Shackleton may not be in the team this weekend as has a family berievment