{{primary_category}}
{{/primary_category}} 
Craig Dawson claims Leeds 'outplayed' West Ham despite losing 2-0
West Ham beat Leeds United 2-0 on Monday night but the scoreline didn’t really reflect the game, with Leeds having two goals ruled out and missing some easy chances.
Leeds conceded a penalty and another goal from a set-piece, with Craig Dawson getting on the end of a corner from Aaron Cresswell.
It wasn’t just Leeds fans who thought they were hard done to, though.
Goal-scorer Dawson admitted in an interview with the official West Ham site that Leeds had “outplayed” West Ham.
“We started the game slowly and could have been punished but thankfully we weren’t and fair play to the lads,” said Dawson. “We came back into the game to go in at half-time 2-0 up.
“It took some courage to come back, to be honest, because we weren’t sharp enough at the start and it was good to get the two goals before half-time.
Subscribe to Football Insider TV now
“Fair play to Leeds because they outplayed us, so to come away with a win is massively important.”
Dawson dropping truth bombs
Fair play to Dawson for saying what we thought we saw from the game.
It should give Leeds fans hope that we’re on the right track. West Ham are aiming for a top-four spot, and are currently fifth in the league, and we more than held our own in the game.
There are some familiar failings rearing their head, though.
Conceding sloppy goals from set-pieces has to be addressed. We’ve conceded the most of any team in the Premier League – and three of them have come against West Ham.
Their other goal in the four they scored against us this season came from a penalty, so they haven’t actually scored a goal against us in open play.
If those two games had gone the other way, Leeds would be just behind Liverpool in the table.
This isn’t a new issue either.
Back in January 2020, we were moaning about Leeds’ inability to deal with set-pieces, with 11 of our 21 goals conceded coming from seven corners, two free-kicks and two penalties.
Leeds have conceded 11 of our 21 goals from set-pieces in the Championship this season (52%). Seven of these have come from corners, one more than the entire 2018/19 season (6). Total set-pieces conceded: 7 corners, 2 free-kicks and 2 penalties). #LUFC
— LUFCDATA (@LUFCDATA) January 3, 2020
Diego Llorente hasn’t got to grips with it. He was to blame for the headed goal from Dawson on Monday.
It’s something that Bielsa – who is such a stickler for detail in training – has to get to grips with next season.
In other Leeds United news, Super Computer predicts where Leeds will finish in PL after 4 defeats in last 5 games