Tottenham Hotspur legend Ledley King believes Leeds United are strong favourites to return to the Premier League, should they maintain their form through the festive period. The west Yorkshire outfit have transformed themselves into frontrunners for promotion under Marcelo Bielsa and they were temporarily at the top of the standings over the weekend before Norwich City leapfrogged them to the summit.
Leeds United might have been able to register a victory over QPR in their most recent Championship fixture, but their head coach Marcelo Biesla had no hesitation in accepting the fact that it was not a clinical performance by his team by any stretch of imagination and that they were not the dominant out of the two sides in the games despite them emerging the victorious.
According to Biesla, there were phases when his boys played well and the proceeding were under their control, but then there were phases where the opponents bounced back hard and particularly in the dying stages of the game, they shifted the pressure back massively. The leveller was not too far away from their reach, but Leeds somehow weathered the storm and remained in advantage of one goal when the final whistle blew.
Leeds are on course to finish the year at the top of the table, and pushing for a spot back in the Premier League – one of our top tips for this weekends football is to back them to beat Bolton on Saturday, which will see them hit the top spot, because rivals Norwich City don’t play until Sunday.
Biesla also stressed that there was a lot of physicality involved in the game and it was a factor which defined the day’s play. The kind of build most of the opposition players carried, especially those in the defensive line, it was really difficult to handle them. And because of the presence that they had, they were threatening a goal all the time. From Leeds’ point of view, they never had the advantage of more than one goal. So they were not quite in a comfortable frame of mind. They were constantly under pressure.
“We had too many tall players in front of our box, so we had to solve this problem and as we were only winning by one goal the result was at stake.” Biesla was quoted saying by LeedsLive.
Leeds is at no. 2 in the Championship standings at the moment with 42 points in 21 games. They have won 12 games and have drawn 6.
Leeds United midfielder Kalvin Phillips said that Leeds United has enough quality to end their poor run and that he is sure that they will turn things around. Indeed the Championship is in a poor run of form that has seen him only win one game out of five.
Leeds United made a strong start to the campaign and there were talks that the team can finally mount a serious push for promotion to the Premier League but things have changed for the worse in recent weeks. Their last result was against a weakend Brentford side on Saturday where they were held to a 1-1 draw. (more…)
Yorkshire Evening Post journalist Phil Hay does not believe Leeds United will make an approach to sign Robert Huth on a free transfer. The German has been without a club since being released from his Leicester City contract last summer and he recently suggested that he would be open to the prospect of playing for Marco Bielsa’s team.
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However, speaking to the Inside Elland Road podcast, Hay has claimed that there is no chance of Huth making the switch to Yorkshire as he does not fit into the scheme of things under Bielsa, he said: “I have looked into this and from what I’ve been told there is no chance of him coming to Leeds, although he was angling for it.
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Michael O’Neill, the manager of Northern Ireland describes Bailey Peacock-Farrell of Leeds United as “confident and assured” following the young full competitive international debut of goalkeeper. Whites no 1 Peacock-Farrell got its first competitive start for Northern Ireland in the UEFA Nations League hosting of Bosnia on Saturday afternoon, who made a 2-1 win at Windsor Park.
Elland Road, who perhaps had been heaving and seething like none other championships indeed positively revealed and got hopeful during the success of one promotion and the uneasiness of the other one. All the fans sporting home shirts similar to a man it seemed, they even ensured that atmosphere would be white hot even more than what stoke could have handled in a day. The newcomers who were champions were in fact be half-a-yard behind their current hosts and had to pay the price with a score line that reflects their opening salvo at their current level.
