Despite last result, Felix Wiedwald’s starting to give Leeds fans reason for cautious optimism

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Felix Wiedwald has attracted a lot of criticism since his arrival at Leeds United, but perhaps he is starting to show he is turning a corner at Elland Road.

For much of the first-half of the season, many Leeds fans were imploring Thomas Christiansen to make sure that a new goalkeeper was on the club’s shopping list for the January transfer window.

Rob Green was excellent last season, and his replacements, Felix Wiedwald and Andy Lonergan have both been dropped already since arriving at Elland Road in the summer. The fact that Leeds had every opportunity to keep Green probably did not help the pair’s causes.

Wiedwald is the current number one. And while a quick look at Leeds’ last result would suggest that the German is still not proving to be up to standard, he is arguably providing just the slightest hint that he may be turning a corner and could potentially prove to be the number one that the club expected to be getting when they landed him in the summer.

It is difficult to make that point after a game where Wiedwald has conceded four goals, but the 4-3 defeat to Millwall would have arguably been much worse if it was not for a couple of excellent saves from the stopper, and it would be unfair to suggest that he should have done considerably better with any of the visitors’ goals.

It was arguably Wiedwald’s display at the end of the first-half when the score was 2-0 to the Lions and Leeds were down to 10 men that gave the Whites the platform to turn the game around in the early stages after the break.

Supporters are going to need a lot more convincing about Wiedwald before they start to relax as a mistake, unfortunately, has never proved to be that far round the corner in the past. But it must not be forgotten that, of those who have played more than 20 times this season, only two goalkeepers in the entire division have got a better clean sheet ratio than Wiedwald has.

And if his confidence can continue to build without delving into the realms of complacency, then perhaps Wiedwald can start to edge towards being held in the same regard that Green was held in towards the end of last season when his early mistakes – admittedly there seemed to be considerably fewer than there have been this term – were offset by a number of point-saving performances at the business end.