‘Everyone wants to see Leeds fail’ – Dallas sends out warcry ahead of Fulham game
Leeds United star Stuart Dallas said exactly the right things when he was on talkSPORT this morning.
After the Adam Forshaw interview (where he said promotion was a formality) was pretty badly received by fans, Dallas was eager not to appear too confident.
However, he said that he takes strength from the fact that “everyone wants to see Leeds fail” and that the added pressure just spurs the players on.
“At the start of the year we set out to get promoted, that’s what you want to do,” Dallas said. “But, we’ve got a lot of winners in our team. I would love to win the league, of course, but we can’t look that far ahead. there are still eight games left.
“Everyone wants to see Leeds fail, that’s the way it is, we know that and it comes with extra pressure. We’ve got to embrace it and start again on Saturday.
“I think it’s great. I love it. No one likes us and we don’t care. Everyone knows how big a club Leeds is. We saw it last year, the people that enjoyed us failing and that spurred us on.
“We’re not overconfident, we’ve just got to start working hard. We can put it right this Saturday.”
Dallas has been a superstar this season, with the Northern Ireland international playing at left-back, right-back and in the midfield for Marcelo Bielsa.
He’s started all 38 games this season and played 90 minutes in 37 of them. It’s fair to say he’s one of the first names on the teamsheet – the only thing that changes is where he’s playing.
It’s pretty obvious when he talks about people wanting to fail that he’s looking at figures like Frank Lampard and some of the regular EFL pundits on Sky.
Lampard and his Derby side celebrated so hard after beating Leeds in the play-offs that you’d have been mistaken for thinking they’d won promotion.
Instead, they lost in the play-offs and are really struggling to make it there again this season. Meanwhile, Leeds are homing in on the top-two again.
We loved what Dallas said. He said Leeds would put it right on the pitch against Fulham but he didn’t fall into the same trap as Forshaw did.
Three points against Fulham, though, and even we might be tempted to use the F word about Leeds and promotion.
In other Leeds United news, ‘From the noises we’re hearing’ – Graham Smyth delivers Pablo update for Leeds clash v Fulham