By David Woods

14th Dec, 2019 | 5:04pm

'Woeful', 'Cost us the game' – Many Leeds fans blaming one player for shock 3-3 draw

Wow. Leeds threw away a three-goal lead at Elland Road today, in a game that we thought was safe at half-time.

Leeds have the best defence in the league but you wouldn’t have known it today. The defence was shocking in the second half.

And there was a rare misstep from manager Marcelo Bielsa too today.

Gaetano Berardi went off with the score at 3-2 and was replaced by Pascal Struijk in the 84th minute.

The youngster made his debut in the win against Hull in midweek and was given another run-out today but it backfired spectacularly. And it seemed an odd substitution at the time, with Leeds in disarray.

Struijk was to blame for the third goal and the Leeds fans piled on to criticise him.

That’s very harsh. It’s tough to come on into a game like this, with Leeds folding around him. We think the blame should go more to Bielsa for his game management.

Why take an experienced centre-back off to put a youngster with hardly any experience on at that point in the game?

However, Struijk made the mistake and when you’re a defender you need to have broad shoulders and be able to take criticism when you do something wrong.

This will be a big learning experience for Struijk and we’re sure he’ll get through it. But it’s a huge shame after finally making his breakthrough into the first team.

Here are the tweets he won’t want to see tonight…

https://twitter.com/Glynnnston/status/1205892785603325952

https://twitter.com/Mickledonions/status/1205895670726565889

https://twitter.com/owen6leith/status/1205894838995963905

https://twitter.com/RickyRadcliffe1/status/1205898468973305859

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