Finally the long-long season #5 is over. I was very attentive in the season's end trying to get into Champions League. But this time Leeds achieved the 6th position only. Actually why do I say "only"? The main target of the season was continental qualification. So everything is fine – expectations have been met.

Leeds results

But anyway I had chances to gain the 4th position allowing to participate in Champions League. Remember there was an intrigue before the last two fixtures which I described in my blog in the previous post? Here the results of Leeds United matches including two last Premier League fixtures:

Unfortunately we were beaten by Manchester City with 0:3 score and it was the decisive moment breaking all hopes on Champions League. In the last fixture my angry players revenged Aston Villa for that together with fantastic Gignac who scored hat-trick:

 

And resulting Premier League table of season 2013-2014 looks in the following way:

It's certainly the best Leeds result of all 3 Premier League seasons. You can compare:

So now I can start preparing my Leeds to Europa League. It would be great to win it!

Next season has to be very important in sense of winning trophies, getting to Champions League and maybe even battling for PL title!

 

Leeds squad

Currently the most important thing for me is a smart squad analysis. It's necessary to do because I want to bring the team to the highest level where Manchester City and Arsenal now. Hope you will join my analysis tryouts in comments.

Now the squad:

Actually here you may already see the strongest and weakest Leeds positions. But I'm going to discuss the weakest ones in the very end of this blog post. At first I suggest you to share my joy of achievements by Leeds players.

Best Premier League players

Leeds leaders Verratti, Hangeland and Gignac got to the team of the year!

 

Moreover Gignac and Verratti managed to become the 2nd and 3rd in English footballer of the year award:

Season summary reflects my progress in Leeds management:

- overachivers

- top goalscorer award by Gignac

- two best signings of the season

Let's praise Gignac!

Andre-Pierre Gignac is fantastic, fantastic, fantastic!!! I cannot hide my deep impression of his result performance. This world class (that's for sure!) forward scored 32 goals in 31 match! And 29 goals were made in Premier League:

This fact allowed him becoming the best goal score of England and even the whole Europe:

Golden boot award is gained by Leeds leading striker! Yahoooooo! I am really glad that Raymond Domenech took him to France squad for World Cup 2010. Hope to see this talented footballer in real life scoring goals on South African pitches.

Now look to the following screen shot:

All 3 new Leeds forwards (I bought them all before this season) got to the top 6 of Shots on Target rating. This is really good. It means they have fine shot accuracy. Especially Andre-Pierre Gignac. He is simply amazing with his 76% beating Luis Suarez and Fernando Torres.

2 players of my team are in top 4 in MoM statistics:

Other achievements in Premier League ratings

Among other "smithes of Leeds success" are also Marco Verratti and Marquinhos with their assists:

 

Two central Cameroonian midfielders Teicou and Mbia are used with Ball-winning midfielder role very well. They got to the top 7 by average amount of tackles in match:

 

And the best Premier League distance runner is Jadson, Brazilian naturalized into Ukrainian:

 

Final squad analysis before transfers window

Now as I promised we will single out the most weak Leeds positions and after the I will start working hard on transfer market.

Well, looking into the screen shots above you could understand that:

- goalkeeper is good enough

- at least one central defender (Hangeland) is really cool and confident player

- central midfielders (ball-winners + AMC) perform at high level

- forwards are almost superb. I say 'almost' because all forwards apart Gignac are not so great goal scorers.

The weak positions are:

- ML. Daniele Galloppa was feeling himself out of position. Wallace didn't impress, though he was targeted as substitution bench player. Going to sell Galloppa because he is 30 years old but still can be sold for some $10-20M.

- AMR. Padalino and Matthews who were used at this position has the worst ratings. Obviously I need better player here. Sometimes I have been using Marco Verratti, he was trained to this position eventually. But it's not his natural one. Plus I cannot use Marco when I move AMR to MR playing against team having very quick ML.

- DC. It's necessary to buy a new stopper of Brede Hangeland level. And I think he should be young talent.

In the end I would like to say that I am going sell many players who don't play in the main squad often or have low match ratings (below 6.90).

 

And what would you advise me to do? Who knows maybe your idea will be helpful…