Leeds coach Jesse Marsch has given his thoughts on the goalless draw with Aston Villa.
Jesse from the gantry, you had a good view of that, but what did you make of what you saw?
“I saw a team that was fighting like lions and doing everything they could to battle through to hold the clean sheet to find a way to get the result. I don’t you know, I think going down a man obviously makes it hard for us and maybe we could have tried to push the game a little bit more if we stay even, but in the end, I think getting the point showed show the character of the group once again”
Away from the character and what happened after the sending-off, what did you make of the first-half performance from your team with eleven?
“Yeah, we need to be braver, for me, we played a little too conservative. We played backwards too much. We had moments even in the last third where we can show a little more poise and, and a little more quality and patience and so you know, we need to, we need to be better that way, and we’re going to continue to work on that. I think after the time off the group wanted the result so bad that we were a little nervy and then not really playing with the aggression and confidence that we wanted, but you know, Villa slows the game down, and now it’s two or three opponents that we’ve had here that just want to at every moment, throw the ball away, take a minute on every goal kick, and so we need some help to manage this right. We can’t do it alone, and again, the sad thing is, this is the best environment in the league for me and our fans don’t come here to watch a snail’s pace match.”
With the things, you’re just talking about there. I did wonder at halftime how much of your talk to your team was about managing the aggression, the emotional side of things as well, even before that red card.
“Yeah, well, I said no frustration. We know what there, we know what the tactic is. We’re gonna stay focused on what we want to achieve, and find a way to keep pushing the game, right? And we talked about a couple tactical adjustments we wanted to make with and against the ball, you know, but then obviously everything changes when we, when we go a man down. We worked over the four weeks, we’ve worked a few days on man-down tactics, so it helped us I think in the moment to manage it. Next time I think I’m going to work on man-up tactics, that I think, it’d be a better strategy”
Perhaps that is an omen. Good, you worked in it though, that must have been frustrating, especially given the nature of the offences to go a man down?
“Yeah, it was not, Luis, carrying the yellow and shouldn’t do that, right. He puts himself in jeopardy, so that obviously was not an intelligent play.”
How valuable though, does that feel as a point, I suppose, especially when you look at the fact it was a clean sheet after last time out conceding the five goals?
“Yeah, I mean, we always want to, at home here, have good performances, collect as many points as we can. Every point in this league is valuable, you know, and I think I’m continually trying to push this group to feed them, intelligence and confidence and belief and also to help them understand exactly what we want games to look like. We’re not there yet, in the meantime, we’ve got to just keep pushing and getting better and demanding more out of ourselves, but every point is valuable and to be a man down and fight like that and have the clean sheet I think is still a big achievement.”
What did you make of the performance? Let us know in the comments.