Leicester City  2 (Koch 16 og, Barnes 35)                    

Leeds United   0                                                                 

20th October 2022, Premier League.

30,814.

Leeds are starting to become annoyingly predictable; prone to errors at the back and continuing to miss the few decent chances we conjure up at the other end. I don’t think we were any worse than Leicester tonight but, at crucial moments, their players just seemed to have a little more quality and certainly more composure on the ball than ours did. It’s going to be a long season me thinks!

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The statistics for this game tell the story quite well; Leeds amassed 14 goal attempts yet only hit the target twice while Leicester were restricted to only five attempts of which only one hit the target yet they ended the night with two more goals than we did. Leeds won nine corners to the hosts’ two and yet we managed hardly a sniff from any of them. It really doesn’t auger well and, as well as we played against Arsenal the other day, if we cannot solve our goal drought soon we will find ourselves in big trouble.

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We had first-half efforts from Sinisterra (hit the angle) and Summerville (comfortably saved) but that was the extent of our attacking moments and nothing came of either. At the other end Roca was caught out and mugged and then Robin Koch made a poor attempt to cut out the resulting cross and merely steered it into our net. I sometimes think if we didn’t have bad luck we’d have no luck at all! But it’s not luck is it? It’s moments of poor judgement. Another one came after 35 minutes as the Leeds defenders were all attracted to the ball like moths to a lamp but we left Harvey Barnes as free as a bird to hammer home the second goal. This is the same Harvey Barnes who has now scored in five consecutive games against us; you’d think we’d have kept a close eye on him, wouldn’t you?

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Two – nil down at half time and muffled boos could be heard coming from the away fans. The second half was mainly one-way traffic towards the Leicester goal but such chances as we created could hardly be described as clear-cut ones. There was another good shot from the lively Summerville that was deflected over the top for one of those nine corners while our luck was summed up when an overhead kick from Llorente struck Patrick Bamford who, as so often, was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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At the final whistle, there were more boos and the Leeds fans had questioned “What the f*** is going on?” when Jesse Marsch withdrew Luis Sinisterra earlier. Even the fact that it was cult hero Joffy Gelhardt coming on didn’t answer the question as to why our most potent player was withdrawn with us still needing two goals for a point! And this after many fans had already queried why we had chosen to make three unenforced changes to the second-half side that did so well against Arsenal.

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At the end of the game, most of the Leeds players did come over to thank us for our support but only Rasmus Kristensen lingered for any length of time, seemingly soaking up the Leeds fans' ire maybe to use it as motivation in coming games; we can only hope so. There was no Jesse Marsch this time which also annoyed the fans who demanded to know where he was in not quite such polite terms.

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So, another case of playing “OK” but “OK” is not going to cut it, especially if we continue to gift goals to the opposition while failing to register any ourselves. Stevie Gerrard was jettisoned tonight after Fulham beat Villa; a Villa with the same number of points as Leeds. I’m sure that will be in Marsch’s thoughts as he prepares his players to face Fulham on Sunday. It feels like a watershed game to me; lose it and I’d expect all hell to break loose!