BBC pundit Leon Osman tears Leeds United to shreds after Nottingham Forest defeat in Premier League
Match of the Day 2 pundit Leon Osman believes Leeds United were “awful” in the second half of their defeat to Nottingham Forest and were bereft of ideas in the attacking third.
The Whites made it six Premier League games without a win since the World Cup break as they huffed and puffed their way to a 1-0 defeat at the City Ground, with Brennan Johnson’s volley the goal that split the two sides.
Speaking on Match of the Day 2 (Sunday 5 February, 41:15), pundit Osman was mind boggled by the lack of attacking creativity the Yorkshire outfit served up, especially when chasing the game in the second half.
He said: “When you’ve made signings and when you’ve got your team, there’s ten other players [other than Willy Gnonto] on the field, what’s your pattern of play? What are you trying to do? Who is going to stand up and try to create something?
“Leeds were awful in that second half. I think they had 75% of the possession and they had an XG of 0.2.
“They didn’t know what to do with it, they kept going down the left-hand side and Aurier didn’t let Gnonto have an opportunity, so they would come back into the middle and just give the ball away.
“They had nobody running into spaces, they had no ‘let’s play it up to the strikers and find a pattern to find an opportunity’, they didn’t know what to do and ended up giving the ball away time after time.”
Huge worry
All of the hype and positivity surrounding Elland Road at the end of the January transfer window has been dashed through just 90 minutes of football.
Many Leeds supporters would have hoped the acquisitions of Austrian international Max Wober, Georginio Rutter and Weston McKennie would have halted the club’s slide towards the Premier League relegation zone, but there were no signs of improvement on show.
Without the bang-in-form Rodrigo at the top of Leeds’ attack, their only other alternative was to use Willy Gnonto as a spearhead for their attack, but this became more and more predictable as the game went on.
When Forest boss Cooper decided to mark the Italian out of the game through Serge Aurier, Marsch’s side struggled to find many other avenues to success as they looked to nick a late goal.
With Manchester United awaiting twice in the next week, things could still get worse for the American’s underperforming side.
In other Leeds United news, Sky Sports made a major Daniel James blunder ahead of the Nottingham Forest game.