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Championship and EFL Football

jts1882 said:

Playing on is one thing, but the way the Leeds player pretended to be about to put the ball out and then passed was underhand. The old Leeds were back.

Nice from Bielsa but does he know nothing about Leeds' heritage?
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That was bizarre
 
Do we have a tactics/formations thread? I wasn't sure what to do with this but thought it interesting.

Sheffield United’s overlapping centre backs coming to a Premier League ground near you

If Sheffield United had spent the past three seasons in the Premier League their tactical innovations would have been lauded. “If I was in a bar having a coffee with friends, I would say Sheffield United’s manager is someone with new ideas and I have seen very few people with these kinds of ideas,” Marcelo Bielsa, the Leeds United head coach, said in November.


The most eye-catching feature of the Blades’ approach — “front-foot football” as Chris Wilder, the manager, describes it — is their use of overlapping centre backs. United play an expansive 3-5-2 formation, with Chris Basham and Jack O’Connell, the first-choice right and left-sided centre backs, either side of John Egan.

A consistent weapon in their armoury has been Basham and O’Connell’s attacking forays, their adroit link-up play with Enda Stevens, the left wing back, and either George Baldock or Kieron Freeman at right wing back, while one of several technically gifted midfielders in United’s ranks — usually John Fleck or Oliver Norwood — covers defensively.

The tactic was first employed in 2016-17 when United, then in League One and a big fish in a small pond, faced opposition who, to coin a phrase, parked the bus — especially at Bramall Lane. “The only overload we could get was a right or left side centre back going on,” says Alan Knill, the assistant manager who, more so than Wilder in fact, is the architect of the Blades system.

The issue, initially, was defensive vulnerability, “Once they go,” Knill says. “We got done 4-1 at Walsall, and it was four counterattacks: our right side centre back crossed one of them, and they went down the other end and scored. Four times. So we adjusted it a little bit, but the positives outweigh the negatives. By letting them go — not at the same time — it drives back their best attacking players. And there’s no counterattack [threat] because their best players are defending.”

There have been long hours of work on the training ground to fine-tune the system and counteract opponents’ attempts to obstruct them — which has proved far from easy. And the stats back up how unique the approach is. This season in the Championship, O’Connell and Basham have made 1.34 and 1.56 crosses per game in open play respectively; the average for current top-six centre backs is 0.12. In the attacking third, they have made 11.79 and 13.41 passes per game respectively; a huge increase on the top-six average of 5.97. Basham, the more adventurous of the two, has attempted 49 dribbles — only 14 fewer than Stevens — at a rate of 1.37 per game; the top-six average is 0.36.

Basham has been deployed in midfield on a couple of occasions, but Martin Cranie has proved an able deputy in the system. “Bash can play anywhere on the pitch and Jack is really powerful driving forward,” Knill says. “It really suits them. It’s such a risk-and-reward way of playing. But it’s enjoyable to watch.”

When promotion from League One was sealed in 2017, Knill and Wilder analysed hours of Championship football. They concluded that most teams in the division were risk-averse in their approach.

Sound familiar? A dozen teams in the top flight could be characterised as such but, next season, do not expect Sheffield United — or their overlapping centre backs — to tame their buccaneering spirit.
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An interesting idea. It could work for us say with Vertonghen pushing forward (he has played wing back for Belgium) and Dier covering. It's always good to have alternatives for getting width.
 
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How Marcelo Bielsa gave Leeds fans something to be proud of again

What is football for? Why do people go, week in and week out, to watch teams that very rarely come close to achieving anything close to their ambitions, and at times can barely be bothered even to trot through the motions? Why do they expend so much emotional energy in entities that at any moment can be taken over by the corrupt or incompetent? What’s the point?

Fans anger quickly these days but disillusionment takes much longer to set in. There is far more booing in stadiums than there used to be, and social media gives public vent to the grumbling that was once confined to pubs, which probably inflates it and at times gives it a performative aspect. But attendances are far more stable than they used to be. People keep going.

Yet disillusionment had set in at Leeds United. Crowds have fallen from an average of nearly 40,000 in 2001-02, the season after they reached a Champions League semi-final, to under 22,000 in 2015-16. There had been a recent upturn but, still, what has happened this season has been astonishing. Marcelo Bielsa has given Leeds something to believe in again.

What happened against Aston Villa on Sunday, when he instructed his side to concede a goal to cancel out one that had been scored against the spirit of the game, will cement his legend. A win would have kept Leeds’s hopes of automatic promotion alive. This was a match that mattered. The gesture had consequences.

What if Bielsa had not ordered an equaliser? There would have been condemnation from some quarters, as well as the delicious prospect of John Terry, Villa’s assistant manager, fulminating about fair play, ....
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:D

...

In an environment that so often these days is about nothing more than making as much money in as short a period as possible, Bielsa grasps the notion of a club as representative a region and its people, of something more than a collection of celebrities generating content to drive social media traffic.

He understands support, what it is when a football club is part of your heritage, part of your being. And he understands that in such circumstances, success is only part of what is important. Whatever happens in the play-offs, Leeds fans will never forget this season. They will always have the memories of the time the love came back.

Bielsa may not win as often as he should but then what is winning if it is without nobility?
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It wasn't a game that mattered - Leeds would have had to have something like a 14 goal goal difference turnaround in the final pair of fixtures
 
Grays_1890 said:
I thought the rule/etiquette was play on unless its a head injury
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Theres a couple of things with this one, firstly Villa put the ball out earlier in the game when a Leeds player went down. Not unreasonable to expect the gesture returned.

Secondly the Leeds player feigned like he was going to kick it out, then played the attacking ball - really clam move on his part. Had he carried on playing "normally" Villa wouldnt have stepped down and relaxed. He mugged them off.
 
The first was a foolish assumption for Villa to make. The rule/convention is to play on and only stop for head injuries.

The second is why Villa have a point, at least at a moral level. It just confirmed why Leeds are everyone's second favourite team,
 
Villa stopped when they thought the Leeds player was passing it out, not before.

Dont get me wrong, they were pointing and carping the whole time about it, but they didnt stop playing until the Leeds player acted like a Leeds player
 
Leeds striker Patrick Bamford has been banned for two matches by the Football Association after being found guilty of "successful deception of a match official" in the draw with Aston Villa.

Bamford went down as though he had been hit in the face by Anwar El Ghazi after Leeds' controversial opening goal.

Replays showed Villa's Dutch winger had made no contact with the head of the 25-year-old.

El Ghazi was sent off but had the red card rescinded on Tuesday.

Bamford will miss Sunday's Championship trip to Ipswich and the first leg of Leeds' play-off semi-final tie.

Leeds said in a statement that although Bamford did not deny the charge they had requested a hearing to "contest the penalty imposed on the player".

They added: "The club felt that given the circumstances surrounding the incident, including the extraordinary act of sportsmanship which saw our head coach Marcelo Bielsa demand our team to allow Aston Villa to score an uncontested equaliser, we could have a sensible discussion around the sanction.

"We acknowledge that the FA panel did not feel that to be reasonable and the club therefore joins Patrick in accepting the two-match ban."

The melee, in which the Bamford incident occurred, was sparked after Mateusz Klich scored for Leeds with Villa players appealing for the ball to be played out after Jonathan Kodjia had gone down injured in the centre circle.

After clashes between the players and an exchange between the two benches, Leeds boss Bielsa ordered his team to allow Villa to walk in an equaliser from kick-off, which was scored by winger Albert Adomah. Sunday's game finished 1-1.

On Tuesday both clubs were charged with failing to ensure their players conducted themselves in an orderly fashion in the aftermath of Leeds' goal. They have until 18:00 BST on Friday to respond to their respective charges.

Leeds' failure to win saw Yorkshire rivals Sheffield United promoted to the Premier League and they will now feature alongside Villa in the play-offs.
 
The atmosphere at Derby is awesome. Our lot should be tubing in, players and fans. This is how you get a job done on the final day of the season.
 
Lots of changes were on the cards at one point. Sheffield United grabbing top spot, West Brom pipping Leeds for third, Boro knicking the last playoff spot. In the end it was as they were.

Of the playoff teams only Derby won, so they must be positive about prospects against Leeds, who have not only missed direct promotion but managed to lose to the bottom club in their final game.
 
Grealish has been really poor against West Brom so far. Play off leg one, doesn't look Premier League material at all. Could prove me wrong second half...
 
Keeps getting caught on the ball and has a propensity to dive.. Meanwhile Jay Rodriguez has completely lost his pace. Real shame.
 
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