Leeds United’s home loss raised fresh questions about their promotion hopes.
Garry Monk must have known this day would come. There’s only so long you can thrive in the Championship before opposition teams work out a way to lodge a spanner in the works. And, typically, former gaffer Neil Warnock could be the man to cast doubt over Leeds United’s promotion hopes, as reported by the Yorkshire Evening Post.
After all, The Whites had been imperious on home soil this season. In fact, Warnock’s Cardiff City were only the second team to beat Leeds at Elland Road since September. The other? League leaders Newcastle United.
However, it wasn’t the result, but the manner of the result that will elicit a degree of concern amongst a fanbase fraught by a desire to end their 13 year wait for Premier League football.
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“It was like we were expecting it. Cardiff were going to come and play for the draw,” 18-year-old midfielder Ronaldo Vieira, who took responsibility for the crucial second goal, told the Yorkshire Evening Post.
“Teams are going to come here and try to slow things down but we’ve got to speed it up as we’re playing at home. It’s a learning curve and we have to learn.”
They certainly do. If possession is nine tenths of the law then nobody told Warnock’s point-pilfering Cardiff. Leeds accumulated 72 per cent possession on Saturday yet struggled to open up a deep-lying side who took full advantage of their few meaningful opportunities.
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Leeds are not a side blessed with creativity and while it’s far too early to suggest they’ve been ‘found out’, successive defeats have made clear the need for other players to step up to the fore to create and take chances.
This is perhaps the biggest test of Garry Monk’s reign so far; overcoming teams purely intent on checking their progress.
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