The good thing is that there’s enough of a cushion that this shouldn’t really be too much of a problem.
However, there was a pretty good gap at the turn of the year during the last campaign, and we all know how that turned out, so it depends how much of a pessimist you are how much attention you’ll pay to something like this. Something rather strange has happened at Elland Road in the past month, and that’s the defence has all of a sudden become rather suspect.
Having only conceded more than one goal once up until December (and that was with ten men against Millwall), all of a sudden Leeds have managed to do so three times in the space of four games against Cardiff City, Fulham and Birmingham City. If you go back into the history books, it was during the winter last season that Leeds went through their worst run of form, and something that cost the club dearly come the end of the season.
And now we find ourselves in an almost similar situation, where all of a sudden this defence which seemed impregnable a few months ago, is sending a message to the rest of the league that, similar to Ivan Drago in Rocky IV ‘You cut him! You hurt him! You see. You see. He’s not a machine, he’s a man’ and that they can be beaten after all.
I said at the start of the season, that one of the big keys to Leeds’ promotion challenge this season is going to come from what Marcelo Bielsa learned during his first season in the Championship, and making the necessary tweaks and adjustments to make sure that the club doesn’t make the same mistakes again.
Now that we’ve seen that there are a few more faults in our game, this time at the back rather than in attack, will Bielsa be able to make the adjustments to make sure that we don’t have as bad a January as we did last year?
Are you concerned with the amount of goals Leeds are starting to concede?
Yes
No
Or are we going to be made to sweat once again at the end of the campaign despite being comfortably in the driving seat heading into the second half of the season?