It's a tough job giving the ghost writer extraordinaire a break for a week - but this is a free hit for me, we get knocked out and we get to concentrate on the league, or we win with a B team and keep the home record intact and hopefully get some new heroes pushing for the starting jerseys.
Harrogate Town.
For those who don't have a Geography GCSE, Harrogate is a quiet spa town at the border of North and West Yorkshire.
My neighbour Colin is a Leeds fan, he cleans his car every weekend and mows his lawn at 14:00 every Sunday. He has 2.4 children and a good job in accounts. His dream is to move to Harrogate. That says it all.
The history - founded as Harrogate Hotspur in 1919 they are as old as us, but were renamed Harrogate Town after WWII, as a mark of respect for Douglas Bader - the great one testicled fighter ace who was born and raised in Killinghall, just down the road. They have never got further than the 3rd round of the FA Cup in their history. They have one trophy in the cabinet, the 2019 FA North Yorkshire Cup, where they beat Topcliffe in the final.
Harrogate is populated with Leeds fans, about 50% of the Harrogate Town players, board and fans are Leeds fans. This should be a great atmosphere on Saturday and I wonder if we'll get MOT sung from all 4 sides for once?
Anyway - on to us...
Expect a B team with "Ill with Measles" not in goal and a variety of U21 and squad players getting minutes. We should have a nice quiet home win in a freezing ER, bring your thickest jumpers folks.
Famous Harrogate Town Fans include:
Billy Bremner
Jonny Giles
Norman Hunter
Don Revie
(probably)
Leeds B 3 - 1 Harrogate
Weather: expect warm winds coming inland from Senegal and a bright 23 degree sunny afternoon.
A lot of things weren’t working right on Saturday. As pointed out by Daniel, our game was too narrow as the wide players forgot… to be wide players. And Guilavogui at CB was quite chaotic. Solomon by distance our best player, and, most important of all, Darlow got a chance, and he should keep his spot in the team for now.
Another observation: we missed Aaronson’s energy and enthusiasm. Is he really coming good? Maybe, and I, for one, really hope so, and just wish that he will score even more goals given the amount of chances he gets almost every game.
MOT
And my next MDT will be HOME vs Millwall/Dagenham & Redbridge
Today we had Gnonto & Ramazani inverting and then we had Byram & also inverting which ment we had 6 players in a area the size of the 18 yard box. Is it any wonder we did not look dangerous most of the time.
It took Solomon going out close the the sideline and putting crosses in to be dangerous. Ramazani goal while extremely well finished from a excellent cross by Solomon. People need to know that the space was only created by intelligent movement from Joseph which drew the keepers eyes, 4 defenders.
Schmidt, is a good player. His movements and passing were good and for his full 90 minutes of football in 5 months he seemed to only become better as the game went on.
Didn't see the match but listened whilst driving, seemed a pretty familiar story, bags of possession but no end product. To be fair to some of the players, they probably hadn't played together as a team that much, however having said that, they should have been enough to comfortably win the tie, even if one or two were playing in unfamiliar positions.
One name was standing out all the time and that was Solomon, who is proving a key figure now fully fit. Joseph just needs to calm down and stop running around like a whirling dervish.
Hopefully as someone said, we get say Citeh at home, get knocked out and get back to the priority of the league.
Well in my opinion we made very hard work of that game and I think proves we lack strength in depth can we get a premier league team next round at home and bow out make the league a priority
Well done Soopa and Smurf and our MDT's are better than our performance's....
Schmidt was ok but average. Guilavogui looked a bit dodgy with positioning and passing a couple of times considering he's played 8 times for France....
I've never rated Solomon but he was excellent today, albeit against lower opposition.
At the end of the day we're top of the league and in the next round of the FA Cup and some of our fans still aren't happy!
A bit too nervy. Not saying that we’re not better than them, but we don’t exactly look like a soon-to-be-promoted team.
Thank f for Solomon.
As my dear old Gran would say - "all wind and woof"
We can't blow down the house made of bricks
Come on leeds
Darlow byram struijk ampadu smidt big josh Rothwell willy Solomon Joseph ramazani, who playing no 10?
Cracking WF that soopa, can't see owt wrong with that. It's important to get it right.
Probably be a tightish game. I hope it doesn't go to extra time with the freezing temps forecast.
I hope Darlow plays well
2-1 us
6 times more people there than there was a Bramall lane the other night, 6000 they got.
Bambi out for at least 4 weeks with a hamstring injury! Christ no wonder the NHS is over stretched (as indeed appears to be Bambi's hamstring!). Well there goes any possibility of him leaving in the transfer window. (We appear to be the only team in the football league that purchases injured players!!}.
As to the game, well I remember posting a while ago that the FA Cup no longer holds any great excitement for me. I guess the neutrals will be looking at this as a banana skin. I agree with most that this should be a game for the fringe players, we don't need a Sunday league tackle on any of our 1st team players.
Think it'll be a more convenional XI than many expect, I suspect the experiments to happen in the second half rather than the first, and along the following lines
Meslier
Schmidt
Rodan (Debayo to come on as sub)
Ampadu
Wober
Guilavogui
Tanaaka (Crew to come on as sub)
Gnonto
Rothwell
Joseph
Ramazane (Chambers to come on as sub)
Another informative MDT
I also would like some of the fringe players to get a go as they need to show they are worth keeping or to put them in the shop window but as cup tied am not sure that’s a good idea
Anyway 2-0 Leeds razzamataz to score
If i was picking the side i go for this line-up.
Darlow
Byram, Debayo, Guilavogui, Schmitt
Gnonto, Crew, Rothwell, Ramazani
Joseph, Gelthardt
Here's hoping for a comfortable win without the stress and disappointment of the last 2 league games. Enjoy reading all MDTs keep it up. Harrogate overawed by ER atmosphere 5 - 0 to the whites. The BBC's iplayer and Red Button are showing the game live for those of us who cannot get to match.
In it to win it, may your run carry on until Wembley.
Quality MDT Soopa and good luck with your prolonged run to Wemberlee.... I'd love a cup run and we've got strength in depth in our squad if we buy a couple of players in JANUARY!!
I remember the cup run in 87(?) and went to the semi v Coventry....we got to the upper tier of our end and couldn't move anywhere near our seats and had to stand in the gangway at the bottom of the steps all game. This was an accident waiting to happen and the following season the Hillsborough Disaster happened in exactly the same fkn place!
The whole city was buzzing from this run....
This is far better than the tosh served oop by Smurf on the Championship MDT....most weeks the confused bloke doesn't even know who we're fkn playing!
We HAVE to play Darlow, Schmidt, Guilavogui, Debayo, Crew, Chambers, Gnonto, Ramazani, Bamford and put our stronger players on the bench.... it's what a squad is for and we'll still have far too much for a team fighting relegation to non league!
I'm going for a positive 3-0 victory with a hat trick by Hattrick Bamford....
Please send my regards to your neighbour Colin....