As Oscar Wilde might have said, to lose one away game may be regarded as a misfortune, but to lose six looks like carelessness. There’s a pattern here, and the latest was at the hands of West Bromwich Albion.

Once again it was a game of fine margins when Leeds had plenty of possession, but were unable to break down a side using what’s now known as a ‘low block’ after taking the lead. When Daniel Farke spoke to LUTV after the game he said that although our approach play was good, the last 5% was missing, and we needed a bit more “brutality” up front.

But when he was asked about a possible penalty we could have had in the first half, he had plenty to say about that incident. “Willy Gnonto, highly motivated, playing the first time from the start in this in this game, Italian international one against one on the goalkeeper. Free shot. Why should he go down and dive?”

“Obviously, it was a decisive moment in the game and like I mentioned to go and lead against West Brom always changes everything against a side who is so focused and concentrated on defending. We have experienced ourselves how difficult it is in this league to turn games and obviously it was a decisive moment.”

This was a game where Farke badly needed a result after the defeat at Preston, and having made no changes for the trip to Lancashire, this time he did the opposite and brought in five new faces. Two of the changes were enforced, with Meslier suspended and Struijk injured, and a third was Byram’s return to the starting eleven after his own lay-off. This allowed Spence to move to his favoured right back slot.

So only two changes were to give players a rest, with Gruev and Gnonto coming in for Kamara and James. There was a familiar face on the WBA side in the shape of Alex Mowatt, but our other old boy Kyle Bartley was left out, presumably because he would be too slow to handle our pacey forwards on the break. And of course there was Carlos Corberan in the opposition dugout, who is rapidly turning into a Bielsa mark two.

Leeds began the game in determined fashion, but found it hard to get through a well organised Albion defence, and when we did get the ball in the net Byram looked well offside, a fact confirmed by the linesman’s flag. Apart from that the closest we came was a dipping shot from Summerville that he sent too close to Palmer, so the Albion keeper was able to tip it over the bar.

There was trademark awful free kick from a good position, and it seems the only tactic we have is to smash it into the wall and hope it somehow gets through. The only time it’s come close to working was at Blackburn, but we’ve no chance if the wall stands firm, as it did this time and every other time we’ve tried this tactic. Rant over.

And then there were two penalty shouts, one when Rutter was tackled near the by-line and the other described above, when Gnonto was pulled down as he came into the box. The best you can say is that both incidents looked more like penalties when you watch the replays than they did at normal speed, and as we haven’t got VAR in the championship those aren’t the penalty shouts that are likely to be awarded.

At the other end, Darlow came well off his line for a corner and got no more than the slightest touch on the ball, but was bailed out by Spence’s quick thinking to get on the line to block the resulting shot. If Meslier had done that the Frenchman’s critics would have been all over him. And there was more poor defending as Albion took the lead in the 37th minute.

Nobody tracked Wallace’s run down their right, so he had plenty of time to have a look and see where his cross would be most effective. He pulled the ball back for Diangana, and though it was unlucky that the ball came straight back to him when his first shot was blocked by Ampadu, he did well to quickly adjust his feet to guide the ball into the corner where Darlow couldn’t get to it.

And so we were in the familiar position of having to break down a resolute side who had a lead to defend. And after an hour Farke employed his familiar tactic of throwing extra attackers onto the field. The ineffective Gnonto came off, as did both full backs, with James, Bamford and Anthony all coming on. So we now had a back three, including Ampadu, with Gruev dropping slightly deeper.

Not that Albion showed any ambition to try to expose our newly-weaked defence. Corberan had done his Bielsa-style homework and knew that Farke was likely to try this tactic at some stage, so he had a plan ready to counter it. He made some changes of his own, with Bartley coming on to bolster their defence, presumably on the basis that Bamford would be slow enough for him to cope with.

With the new formation James offered more down the right than Gnonto ever did, but otherwise we probably had too many attacking players who didn’t have clearly defined roles. We now had Summerville, Rutter and Piroe operating in the same area behind Bamford, and on at least one occasion we had two players getting in each other’s way.

We did create chances, including Rodon sending a header over the bar from a corner and a cross to Anthony in a good position which bounced a bit too high for him to control the shot. And as usual Bamford was caught offside a couple of times, as the final pass to him was delivered a little too late. But we mostly spent out time passing round the area looking for an opening that never came.

As we moved into the 90th minute Firpo and Joseph came on for Ampadu and Summerville, but neither change had any effect and we had gone down to another disappointing defeat away from home, with our chances of automatic promotion suffering another knock. I don’t know if our manager has seen the highlights of our promotion rivals, but if he has he will have found a few more decisions to moan about.

As Ipswich continue to stumble they were held 0-0 at home by lowly QPR, and it could have been even worse for them, with the visitors being denied a penalty after a good shout for handball. But it was Southampton who took advantage with a win over Plymouth, after the Pilgrims had a goal wrongly disallowed for offside when it was still goalless. Who says we don’t want VAR in the Championship?

So never mind trying to catch Ipswich, we’ve now got a six point gap to make up on Southampton. Which we won’t be able to do if we can’t sort out this inconsistent away form. Perhaps a Pablo-style number 10 would be the answer to unlocking these tight defences if we can find one in the January sales, but otherwise our manager will have to find another way to organise his front line.

Reuters

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