Leeds story today.

World Cup Preamble

Though at first I want to share my minds regarding World Cup. I am really glad that Brazil and Argentina leave World Cup 2010. Please don't hate me for that if these teams were among your favourites. It's just because Brazil was playing in boring football… They shouldn't do that. Argentina made an absolute mistake assigning Maradona as team manager. He knows nothing about football tactics. Maradona didn't take Cambiasso and Zanetti who would strengthen the squad for sure. Just try to imaging pair of DMC's Mascherano and Cambiasso tackling every ball!

And, of course, my applauses to Germany! Their attacking style is great. Hope they will win World Cup 2010!

Tournaments

Now let's get back to Leeds story. Premier League table after 21 fixtures:

The 7th position tells us Leeds is underachieving. Let's try to examine why the situation is like this. At first we should look into played matches screen shot:

I want you to outline matches starting from the first against Reading and ending with Chelsea away game lost with 1:3 score. It was period of real crisis for my team. I think it was caused by adaptation problems of new Leeds players. Additionally my defence and attacks did too many mistakes. Well, you know that Leeds defense is the weakest area on a pitch currently. Suddenly they made very perceptible several errors in 10 matches. Plus 2 mistakes from Enyeama (my goalie). I started to feel myself lost…

Moreover, we had problems in finishing stage. Just look at match stats of our home game with Burnley:

Too many goal chances were failed!

Europe League

Good thing is that Leeds has a success in other tournaments. For instance, Europa League opponents didn't make me to doubt of the team that would take the first position:

Now we will have the following opponents in the next round:

Feyenoord looks more or less dangerous but I believe my team is stronger.

League Cup

This year's League Cup is like Champions League. Just consider Leeds opponents: Manchester United, Tottenham, Chelsea and Wolves (quite tough guys in my game). The quarter final against Chelsea was something like Uruguay – Ghana in real life:

I substituted leading forward Andre-Pierre Gignac by Victor Anichebe. It was done due to light injury although Gignac could continue playing. As a result Anichebe scored twice on 90th and 120th minutes!!! And the goal assists were made by another player who came from substitution bench – Fabian Delph! I felt myself like genius coach after that!

If you take a look at match stats you'll see we had an advantage:

The match is one using counter-attacking style. And this is Leeds player ratings screen shot for you:

After such victories (add previous ones against Man Utd and Tottenham) gaining League Cup is my debt!

Leeds players

Gignac left behind Marquinhos by amount of scored goals. I would like to praise Stephane Mbia and Marco Verratti – they lead my midfield. The first tackles many balls, the seconds creates a lot of goal chances.

Marquinhos

And this is how Marquinhos attributes look currently:

I decided to include screen shot of one Leeds player in every story post.

Transfers

Regarding winter transfers I made decision to restrict myself from buying new footballers. Just sold several guys:

There some comments are needed. All sold players wanted to play in the first team and asked to put them to the transfer list. Giuliano was surprised unpleasantly because I hadn't included him into Europa League squad. High squad competition – what else I can say… So I had to sell this talented midfielder.

Domestic bias

One of you, my dear readers, asked me: "I would like to know what is your domestic player bias and what do you think about it". Well here is the screen shot:

Domestic player bias is not really important I suppose. Though if I have opportunity of buying 11 high-quality English players to my squad I would do that. It's always better when all players talk in English, have same culture playing for club that belong to same country. I think it boosts effectiveness of team in general.

True Football Manager