Leeds Utd    0 ​

Millwall         2 (Azeez 30, 55)  

 

8th February 2025. FA Cup 4th Round

34,923.

 

At the end of the game I felt disappointed by that display. Not disappointed in the result, I fully expected us to lose the game and actually predicted a 2 – 1 defeat in my regular little piece in the YEP (thank you Pascal for spoiling that one!). No, not the result, but the general lack of quality we saw on the pitch today from players who we all thought had more than they showed us in this one.

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The logic behind my pre-match prediction was that I guessed we’d make wholesale changes and rest as many of the regular starting XI as possible and we’ve all seen in seasons past, and indeed earlier this season in the Middlesbrough Carabao Cup defeat, how making so many changes seldom has a positive outcome. Good as the individual players may be, they are just not used to playing with each other and, of course, by definition, you end up with a team full of players with little match practice under their belts and certainly not enough playing time together to form a cohesive unit.

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My disappointment though was that almost no one who started today showed the sort of quality we know, as individuals, they possess. We’ve seen most of them playing in the Championship as substitutes this season and, of course, the likes of Ampadu, Rothwell and Struijk have been regular starters. But, for whatever reason, it was their individual poor displays that disappointed, indeed, had they all played to their obvious potential, we could easily have won the game. Time and time again simple passes went astray so that, although we had 65 per cent of the possession, we seldom used it to get into the opposition box and create chances! There were just too many individual errors being made when in possession – even with Ampadu and Struijk at times! Maybe the cohesion you get from having regular spells of 70 or so minutes together, week after week, is even more vital than I thought it was and hence even Amps and Pascal were affected by it; who knows?

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We did have chances of course, more chances and better chances than Millwall, and the various stats organisations reckon we had two big chances to only the one for Millwall and very similar xG ratings of around 1.0 each. In that respect we have to accept that Lady Luck also favoured the visitors today – both shots for their goals carrying deflections. The first goal took a wicked one, giving Darlow no chance, the second less so, and there has to be a question mark over Karl getting beat at his near post for that one. For our part, we saw young Sam Chambers have a couple of decent attempts, one well-saved but one that even Daniel Farke reckons he puts away “ ten times out of ten in training”. Ramazani had another effort well saved by the excellent Liam Roberts too.

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So, yes, it was disappointing that so many of our players given their big chance today didn’t really shine, and it probably only confirms that, once we move away from the regular starters, there is a bit of a gulf in individual quality. The usual bench fillers are all good enough to do a job for a few minutes at the end of a game but, in truth, for most of them, not much more than that. I thought Karl Darlow, Willy G, Mateo Joseph, Josuah Guilavogui, Isaac Schmidt and Sam Byram all fell into that category and were all below par today while  Sam Chambers, though obviously lacking experience, generally did OK.

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None of it matters though does it? As long as the first XI come out on Tuesday at Watford all guns blazing and we get a positive result down there then we can quickly forget today’s disappointment! The only slight worry is that, in years gone by, we’ve seen this scenario play out before; a poor, lack lustre cup exit by a scratch team has often been followed by a similar unenthusiastic display from the main men , even after their one game rest! Fingers crossed, not this time please!