‘Impossible’ – Gary Neville responds to Leeds criticism after 6-2 defeat v Man United
Gary Neville has claimed that it is “impossible” to criticise Leeds United despite their 6-2 defeat against Manchester United on Sunday.
The Whites may have crashed to defeat at Old Trafford, but they missed numerous clear-cut chances themselves in both halves.
Neville admitted that he won’t criticise Leeds or Marcelo Bielsa once in the entirety of this season, no matter what happens between now and May.
Speaking to Sky Sports after the game, Neville admitted that the Whites have offered the Premier League something that promoted sides from the Championship have never done.
“I can’t criticise them,” he said.
“I’m not going to criticise them all season. I don’t want them to change, I don’t expect them to change, Bielsa is a great coach. To get a team to commit like that, in them last few minutes, to be losing 6-2 and still sprinting forward like that, and giving there all.
“I’ve never seen a team as committed on a football pitch as that, that have come up from the Championship. I’ve never seen a group of players who through 90 minutes of every match I watch them, they run themselves into the ground, they give absolutely everything.
“It’s impossible for me to criticise them.”
Looking at the stats from the game, it wasn’t a 6-2 clash to say the slightest, but quality shone through in the end at Old Trafford.
The Whites had 58.5% possession, and 13 corners according to WhoScored – the only stat the home side bettered Bielsa’s men was shots on goal, with there being a difference of nine shots in the end.
The game plan could have gone out of the window immediately after being two goals behind in only three minutes, but Leeds never stopped coming forward.
It can get frustrating when it goes wrong, but the main goal is to survive in the Premier League, if we can do that and catch the eye along the way, we have overachieved.
Pundits consistently get carried away when discussing Leeds, and the one person we expected to talk the most sense wasn’t Neville, but we will definitely take it.
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