Leeds United feed off the crowd at Elland Road, which explains why they play so well at their home ground. This weekend, they welcomed Manchester City in hopes of getting more points on the board towards safety.
The Whites’ last few games have seen them climb up the table, but they cannot be completely comfortable yet with multiple games to go. On Saturday night, they started the game like a house on fire; just like in the Aston Villa game, they made the match as difficult as possible for the opponent. City struggled to string passes together, and their press kept failing at the crucial moment.
One would have thought that Leeds would capitalized on their dominance in the game, but unfortunately they could not bury the one big chance they had in the first half.
Pep Guardiola aims jab at Leeds United fans
City punished the home side with just one sequence of play; Rayan Cherki found Rayan Ait-Nouri with a through ball and the left back put forward a delightful cross for Antoine Semenyo to tap in. They took the lead into the break, and held on to it desperately in the second half.
City passed the ball around for many stretches, keeping the ball away from Leeds United and slowly killing the game. The home side managed to get some attacks in late in the game, but it was too little, too late. After the match, Pep Guardiola revealed that the key to seeing out the game was to silence the home crowd by keeping the ball:
“They started really well, we expect it here at Elland Road, Leeds are always so intense.
“After that, I think we make a thousand million passes to make the vibe of the crowd a little bit calmer and make them run and run after our passes.”
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Leeds need to do more when they have the ball
Daniel Farke sets his team up very well off the ball, and it has shown in these last two matches against Aston Villa and Manchester City. But there still seems to be a fundamental problem when his side have a lot of possession. They can look completely bereft of ideas, with players not knowing what to do and who to give the ball to. On Saturday night, they had to resort to aimless crosses, which the City defence were happy to see out. If Leeds want to clinch survival, they have to start creating and scoring goals.
