Michael O’Neill has admitted that Stoke City are a ‘long, long away’ from where Leeds United are, as his side were thrashed 5-0 by the Premier League hopefuls.
O’Neill admitted that Leeds were just too strong for his side in every sense, as he shared how Stoke couldn’t ‘compete’ with the running power of Marcelo Bielsa’s men, as he told Sky Sports (09/07/20 at 7:15 pm).
The former Northern Ireland boss was brutally honest about the Championship leaders and how good they were.
“Leeds are a team which are a long, long away from where we are at this minute in time,” O’Neill told Sky Sports.
“I thought young Nathan [Collins] found it difficult first half as well. It was the reason for the substitution. But, in the second half, we just couldn’t deal with their running power of Leeds and we couldn’t deal with the physicality, to be honest.
“We lost too many duels all over the pitch. At the end of the day, individually we couldn’t compete with the tempo that they played at collectively. Our only saving grace is that we won’t play a team of that calibre between now and the end of the season.”
The comments from the Stoke man just proves how far Leeds have come. Marcelo Bielsa was appointed manager of the Yorkshire club during the summer of 2018 when Stoke had just been relegated from the top-flight.
Leeds had just finished mid-table in the Championship. Stoke had a Premier League squad at their disposal and had spent money that summer to try and make a return.
At best, many would have said, at the time, that the duo were, at the very least, level, or if anything Stoke were ahead of Leeds. But Bielsa’s genius has changed that in the most dramatic of ways during these last two seasons.
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