Stoke City v Leeds Utd Match Thread

[The Subhuman]

Saiz has better balance under contact than Kemar too.

[LevLeeds]

Good Morning guys,

First post on this forum, but I've been following the match threads for a while. A big thank-you for all the streaming links as I'm living abroad and unable to get to matches.

I've watched most matches this season and think this is our best season for many years. Bielsa is a miracle worker, but at times I think he's naive in his honesty, e.g. spygate, posting the teamsheet days before a match, it gives others an insight (like Nathan Jones) that they don't need to earn and they're able to use against us.

As great as we were against Derby, I thought we were the opposite against Stoke. Stoke looked a poor side to me, if you set out your stall to put 11 behind the ball at home, and then just hope for a goal on the break, set-piece or a mistake, then God help you if you're a home supporter watching that kind of dross.

As a team we were poor yesterday and seemed really devoid of any sense of urgency, or ideas to break them down. Individually I thought nobody played well for us. I agree with other posters that if we get the first goal our plan seems to work, but if the game is turned into a war of attrition (Birmingham, Blackburn, Hull, Stoke, etc) we just get frustrated and the opposition seem to thrive off time wasting and winding our players up. That's Phillips and Jansson sent off in the last two away games. Questionable refereeing, but dissent doesn't help our cause either, and its worrying that we're picking up cards so frequently.

We definitely need someone to make us tick in centre midfield, we seemed to just take ages to get the ball advanced yesterday and pose a threat before they got their bus parked again. I do think we need an aerial threat up front and some more creativity around the final third. This will probably come from Brown and Bamford when they're fit. I lost count of the times yesterday when we had Harrison (don't rate him at all), Pablo, Clarke, etc, trying to dribble past two or three players and then losing the ball, and the odd time we were getting a cross in nobody was in the box, or Roofe was up against their big lumps.

I think we will be more of a force when all our players are back fit. I expect we will get promoted automatically, but as things are it will be a rocky road and we could quite easily be looking for a win in the last match at Ipswich to go up. A few more sharp recruits in the next week could really help to give us some impetus and more of a threat. Our first team are generally safe in their places, due to soem great performances over the season, and a lack of competition and I felt this really showed yesterday.

Very frustrating day yesterday, but hopefully we learn from it, as we need to get something from these types of games.

Where do ya live mate??

[White Riot]

Where do ya live mate??

Bulgaria

[BGwhite]

Bulgaria

Me too. Kavarna.

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[White Riot]

Me too. Kavarna.

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Great stuff Bgwhite, I'm in Plovdiv

[BGwhite]

Great stuff Bgwhite, I'm in Plovdiv

Give us a shout if you're ever over this way.

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[White Riot]

Give us a shout if you're ever over this way

I will do mate, and same to you. Big year for the city with the European City of Culture, it is gonna be awesome

[BGwhite]

Plovdiv or Kavarna ?

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[White Riot]

Plovdiv or Kavarna ?

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Maybe Kavarna has its own ECOC deal going on that I haven't heard about