Sheffield Weds 1 (Darlow og 63)​

Leeds United    1  (Bogle 81)                                                                            (Sheffield United win 3 - 0 on penalties)    

 

26th August 2025. Carabao Cup Rd 2.

7,801.

​

Oh dear – that was a very 21st century Leeds United early rounds cup exit wasn’t it? Year after year over the course of this century Leeds have seen this same scenario play out; put a completely different team on the pitch, one that hasn’t played together, against a young, inexperienced, but eager to please opposition, dominate the possession, but then fail to conjure up a break through and compound it with mistakes of our own making. You can all think of dozens of similar occasions in both the Carabao and FA Cup early rounds.

I’m probably going to annoy some and disappoint others by going against the grain a bit in this piece; I’m not going to lambast the players as all completely useless and the manager as incompetent , unlike most comments I’ve seen on social media in the aftermath of this latest cup debacle. No, I think it’s more complicated  than that and deserves more than a section of Leeds fans hurling abuse at the players and demanding to know “What the f****** hell was that?” as if to suggest the players a) didn’t care and b) weren’t trying. As always, that is unlikely to add anything positive to our equation.

​

First things first, it was an usual setting for a game, with two sides of Hillsborough empty, presumably due to the much publicised boycott of the game by the anti-Chansiri group of Wednesday supporters; straight away that was probably more comfortable for the young team Wednesday put out who would have experienced that atmosphere more recently than our lads. The Wednesday kids were also presumably more used to playing as a team than our group – several of whom are new to the club (and the country don’t forget) and haven’t played competitively together. Both minor observations but I’m sure it had some effect on us.

​

Then the question, “Were Leeds really as bad as some folk are saying?” Leeds dominated the game, as you would expect us to, and more so even than we dominated Everton last week or than Arsenal dominated us at the weekend. This time we amassed 80 % of the possession, a respectable 25 shots, of which 7 hit the target and we recorded an expected goals total of 3. Wednesday had an xG of almost zero, had just 6 pops at goal all night of which 2 hit the target. Leeds fashioned 7 big chances (OK, we missed 6 of them and I’ll come to that!) against nil for Wednesday. It was a totally dominant performance yet still we lost the tie.

​

There were issues with the Leeds performance, I accept that. With the players we put out and in the formation we were then forced to use, we were very predictable, almost every attack coming from the wide positions. It’s something that we saw against Everton too with a totally different starting XI. The common factor is that we simply do not have a creative midfielder at the club at the moment, that Pablo figure with the vision to make a telling pass. (We didn’t throughout last season either of course, but the imagination of Manor Solomon usually compensated for that and Dan James and he were usually unplayable). For most of the game therefore we tried to play down the flanks, initially with Okafor , Aaronson and Jack Harrison from his wing-back position and, later, to more effect, with Willy Gnonto and Dan James. There were two problems with that though – 1) for most of the game we played without the traditional number 9 figure in the middle to take advantage of crosses and 2) even if we’d had one, as we did later with DCL, the quality of the crosses we conjured up was, to say the least, underwhelming! Jack Harrison needs to take at least a club less for his crosses as he constantly hits them way past the back post! Those big chances missed also tell a story, we were simply not clinical enough in front of goal, although huge credit to the Wednesday goalkeeper who was faultless all night, including two penalty saves. Once again. No matter how well you play, you usually need the opposition to err to make a break through. Another worry is that with the giants Bijol and Bornauw in the side we made little use of 8 corners during the game, partly due to the appalling deliveries! So, yeah, we did have issues but we dominated the game and so we can’t just write off the team as useless; careless in front of goal maybe, but not useless.

​

Even when a team dominates possession as we did though, you still need something more to actually get the ball in the net. Generally, if the opposition remains tight and well organised, it is pretty difficult to break through. As we saw with the Everton game, ultimately we needed a bit of luck to get the spoils that day – a referee call that could have gone either way, fell for us. Against Arsenal, had we continued to play error free and as well organised as we did for 34 minutes, it would have been hard for Arsenal to beat us, certainly it shouldn’t have ended 5 – 0. But we didn’t remain tight and organised, we gave the Gunners a helping hand to shoot us in the feet with two bits of poor defending at corners, some questionable goalkeeping, and of course they got a 50-50 call from the referee for the penalty. Last night we again fell foul of Lady Luck when the usually reliable Karl Darlow allowed a straightforward shot to squirm and spin between his legs. That has probably not helped Karl’s cause even if Lucas looks less than perfect so far!

​

By this time we’d turned to Willy Gnonto and we got our first look at Dominic Calvert-Lewin and then on came Jayden Bogle and Anton Stack. Willy and Jayden, two players well used to playing alongside each other, immediately lit up the right flank and it was Jayden of course who got us level with a fine bit of skill and interplay with Willy. That at least was something positive as we now focus on the league campaign.

​

For the final minutes of the game it was like the Alamo out there but, either through lack of game time, or just plain bad luck, the chances kept falling to the seemingly unprepared DCL and so the game went to penalties and I’m sure all Leeds fans feared the worst. I know I did. While it could have absolutely no bearing on this shoot-out, I still immediately had a flash back to our Under 21s at Crewe a few years ago when Junior Firpo, Mat Joseph, Sonny Perkins and Darko Gyabi all missed! I thought that was unprofessional at the time, and I feel the same way about watching Piroe, Calvert-Lewin and Anton Stach missing last night; it’s not acceptable, one maybe, but not all three of them! It was a bad night all round for DCL who squandered three chances  earlier as well, but we all have to hope that it’s just that he’s ring rusty and that he will come good. At least he found the positions to have the chances. My fear is that, like Patrick Bamford, the bloke is not only going to fail to find his former glory but is also going to be dogged by bad luck; I hope I’m wrong.

​

I guess the key question is, ‘did we see enough last night from Bornauw, Bijol, Longstaff, Okafor, Nmecha and DCL to form an opinion as to whether any or all of them will eventually nail down a place in Farke’s preferred starting XI?’ Mostly, all have cost good money, did the recruitment team get it right? I didn’t see Bornauw or Bijol do much wrong and their height must surely be useful to us but will Farke stray from preferring Rodon and Struijk? I’m not sure, but those Arsenal corners suggest more height and technique might be useful. Longstaff I don’t think has shown enough yet and doesn’t fire me with enthusiasm  but the brief glimpse we had of Noah Okafor suggested to me that there is a clever player there who could well make an impact if given the chance. Similarly DCL, we know he’s done the business in the past albeit a while ago now. Nmecha, I’m just not sure yet, but he takes a good penalty!!

​

With Tanaka and Ampadu now out for “several weeks” we will have to reorganise midfield but I have a feeling that we may not see the other new boys until injury or suspensions  force Farke’s hand.  As with previous early cup exits, optimism is suddenly in short supply among the fan base and we need a big performance on Saturday night against Newcastle to get us going again.