The Nearly Men

Staying in the Premier League was always going to be a monumental challenge but a point per game is a good outcome to start with. If you can put some distance between yourself and the relegation spots soon, you can easily survive.

On the field

The year of 2019 is now over and things are faring a little better over here in Elland Road from when i left you last. The key it seems to be able to get out of a bad bit of form is to play Bristol City at home in the league as we smashed them 3-0 with all three goals coming in the first half. Now albeit Liverpool than hammered us 5-1 in the next game but the scoreline does not match the game and we simply fell apart when we pushed too hard for a 2nd equalising goal. However we were back in the winning ways in the next game as we went to St Marys and won 2-0 with Raul de Tomas finally finding the back of the net again.

Moving on to December, we were about to win against Leicester 1-0 but than we conceded in the last minute to give us just the point and it was a similar story against Watford apart from that a draw turned into a loss. Our ability to concede late on is already something that we will need to work on in the back half of the season as we need to get better at concentrating. However, our best performance to date was next up as we beat Tottenham 3-2 in a thriller giving me a very personal satisfying performance. Brighton were than beaten 2-1 before Arsenal smashed us 4-1 as again we fell apart defensively.

Over the Christmas period we had three very winnable games against Huddersfield, Newcastle and Palace and in all three matches we should have won. We dominated the play, had the better chances, had more of the ball, yet somehow we came away with just 2 points as we lost the lead twice in the last 10 minutes and allowed Palace to score a winner in the same time frame.


A nice upturn in performances and we are now safely in mid table and looking fairly comfortable that we are not going to get relegated with Newcastle, Bristol City and Huddersfield all being awful this season. I would have taken 12th at the beginning of the season but the amount of dropped points has been awful and has stopped us competing for a very unlikely Europa League spot. Still we have hit the Winter window and we have the chance to revamp. Here are my current plans.

January thoughts

Goalkeepers

I think i might loan out Bailey Peacock Farrell to get some game time especially as the number of Cup games this season hasn't been at the level i had hoped. I will than promote the young 16 year old (Greaves) i signed in the summer to be understudy for the rest of the season. Other than that Kiko Casilla is still a god and a key player for us still averaging over a 7.

Defenders

Now we need to be better defensively. Lewis Dunk has been disappointing and somehow i need to get more from him. Our movement here will be dependent on the outgoings. We have three right backs (Bogle, Ayling and Wisdom) and that is one too many. Wisdom would be the ideal one to shift on but Ayling is being tracked by Brighton and i could get around £12m for him which should be more than enough to allow me to buy a replacement. Currently Clyne is available and than there is Malcuit (Napoli) and Hateboer (Atalanta) that could be in budget as a replacement.

Other than that i think i will need to do some tactical changes to try and stem the goals being conceded

Midfielders

Again a bit more fat here as Adam Forshaw will get moved on having not played much this season with a return to the Championship the most likely at this stage. Joe Willock and Kalvin Phillips have been the star men for us and right now without them we would be in some problems. The wingers have been inconsistent with Clarke struggling to stay injury free (Albeit now also labelled a wonderkid) and Harrison not showing the same consistency as before. Grealish is streaky and Morutan has shown flashes but we need more consistency if we are going to break into the top half. I still dont see a new face coming in unless i can bring a bit of experience in which probably the one thing we lack right now.

Forwards

Raul de Tomas is starting to get in the goals and leads the charts with a mighty 7 whilst Bamford and Shankland are not doing that well with their chances. Shankland wants to leave on a free after having a hissy fit when we signed De Tomas saying there was too much competition. This is despite selling Roofe so we have exactly the same number of strikers. Another striker could be an option, one with Premiership experience and i might try and rid Shankland early for a cut price to get his wages off the book.

Some great performances from Phillips and De Tomas on show there and you’re looking good in mid-table there. £12m for Ayling is an acceptable fee for a player who has not played much Prem football before Leeds and you currently have 3 right backs which helps your cause.

Some much more encouraging results there after a bad patch of form last time you reported back to us. It seems the goals of Raul De Tomas and Phillips, as Jack has highlighted, have been vital to your improvement. A couple of dropped points against Newcastle and Huddersfield still shows there is work to be done, but you're in a much-improved position than last time. An extra four points would have been ideal, though.

You seem to have identified the areas for improvement, though. That's always ideal because you can look to improve those areas, should the board be able to fund it. There are certainly players that need to be moved on and moving on the likes of Ayling over Wisdom could prove to be sacrifices worth taking given the financial reward. The likes of Grealish have to step up and improve; I'm really surprised to hear both he and Dunk have been disappointing, on the whole.

Shankland was a huge gamble and someone who is obviously not cut out for the Premiership. It's time to bring in a more reliable figure to challenge De Tomas and support him. Should his form drop, he needs to have someone there to replace him and force him to book up his ideas in training to regain his place. But for your debut season back in the top-flight, this isn't a bad season, at all.

Catching up on this has been a joy.

Congrats on the promotion, although expected in some respects, it is still a very tough league to get out of and you have done very well to do it. With some very good deals coming in the summer, after 21 games I'd be very happy with a 12th position whilst also being 12 clear of the relegation zone.

Good stuff mate! Keep it going!

In a reasonable position in the link. It appears to be so congested that you could jump up to the top 8 with a few good results. Keep it up!

Transfers

It was another winter window of some cosmetic changes. Adam Forshaw was the first one out of the door as we moved him on to Cardiff for £2.6m. He had barely played all season and was just taking up space that could go to a younger player in the future. Luke Ayling was indeed the subject of a bid and a £12.5m deal was agreed with Brighton to see the right back move on. We also moved on Andre Wisdom as he joined Barnsley for £250k whilst Caleb Ekuban finally sold to Minnesota for £750k having spent the first half of the season in the U23 squad. Finally Bailey Peacock-Farrell was loaned out to Gillingham for some game time with youngster Sherwin Greaves coming in as No.2 for the rest of the season

Incoming wise we had a pre-arranged transfer for Argentine U20 defender Bruno Amione for £1.3m. Amione was spotted by my scouts at the U20 World Cup as being a potential star so the 18 year old has come to the club and been loaned out to our feeder club in Spain to help him with a work permit. The one now signing was Nathaniel Clyne who was signed for £11.75m from Liverpool having fallen out of favour at Anfield. He is a big purchase and is costing a pretty penny in terms of wages but he is i think an upgrade on Ayling and has the experience at this level to perhaps shore us up in defence.

I did try and offload Shankland but lots of interest but no bids probably as everyone is waiting for him to leave on a free transfer which put a little blocker on me bringing in a new striker due to wage restrictions. Also the new work permit system did also cause some problems in landing Jovetic which was a little of a surprise.

So there is the window, meaning a season of spending £60m but receiving £57m back at the same time. With form picking up and Clyne in, we could be on for a good 2nd half of the season.


On the field

January had a great start as we progressed nicely in the FA cup beating Brentford easily 3-0 with Willock,Grealish and Shankland banging the goals in. This form carried on in the league as we sneaked past Everton 1-0 with Willock scoring the only goal of the game before we beat Norwich 2-1 with Willock scoring his 3rd in 3 games.

Back in the FA Cup 4th round, a kind tie away to Newport once again allowed me to change my team around with Morutan and Shankland scoring a goal apiece to give us a 5th round tie at home to Championship side Aston Villa. Man Utd ended our winning ways beating us 2-0 as we struggled to stop their attacks whilst a 1-1 draw against Bournemouth capped off a pretty successful month.


Can the season finish now? 9th in the league and we are starting to look like a decent team. Survival is pretty much a formality at this point so it all comes down to how we perform for the rest of the season. A top half finish will be an amazing achievement and helps get us a lot closer to our aims of the Champions League. Clyne has settled in very well at right back and is already a marked improvement on Ayling whilst the youngster Greaves looked good in his debut in goal.

Things are all rosy right now

Amazing what a few wins can do! Your league position is looking a lot better, as a result. You're just a couple of wins away from survival. The arrival of Clyne will significantly improve the defence and the signing of Amione looks to be a good one, too. A good find from your scouting team.

It's quite a big gap but you could still potentially finish in a European spot with 7th as long as the right teams win the right cups. It has been an incredible season so far, and i dont think it will be to long before you are challenging that top 6.

Clyne is a massive addition! A good set of results has put you in a position where safety is almost guaranteed, and you have progression in the FA Cup too! Good going.

On the field

Another two months down and a two month period that has secured our Premiership status with 6 games to go.


Another decent spell where we lost just once in the 6 games despite playing both Chelsea and Man City in this spell. A 1-1 draw against Chelsea where we dominated had me in two minds as we should have got the win but it was a point that i had not planned on and it kept us in the top half of the table. We followed that up with another 1-1 draw with West Ham with Raul de Tomas getting a 2nd goal in two games. He was once again the goalscorer against Man City but it wasn't enough this time as City scored the two goals that were enough to win them the game.

It looked like we might have finished February without a league victory as we were cruising to a 1-1 draw against Wolves but Raul de Tomas rose like a Salmon to score a 94th Minute winner and stop our little winless run. Moving into March we followed up with a scrappy 1-0 win over Bristol City thanks to an own goal before managing to scrape a 1-1 draw with Southampton with a rare Bamford goal.

It hasn't been a vintage two month spell in the League and our FA Cup fate was also sealed. We beat Villa in the 5th Round with a nice 2-0 win but Arsenal were just too much in the 6th Round as we went down 5-3 in a barnstomer of a game that saw a number of youngsters get given their chance. They just had too much firepower for us in the end but no shame to lose to them.

So our concentration will be on the league and based on where we are, i might give some more of the kids a little run out for some experience and game time as we are unlikely to get a European position with Palace 11 points clear and safety assured for the season. A top half position would be lovely but i wont lose any sleep over it, if we let it slip a little.

Youth Intake

Our 2nd youth intake was certainly a lot weaker than our first with no real stars to talk about. Callum Phillips being the best of the bunch but still very much a long way off being a 1st team player.


See you next time for teh end of the season!

A good set of results that secure your safety. There's no chance you're finishing in the bottom three with 41 points! A lot of very respectable results. The only disappointment is your loss in the FA Cup, but you certainly made a decent account of yourself against Arsenal. Unlucky.

Great job of securing your safety so early on in the season with six games still left to play. A shame about the poor intake but the foundations are in place to make a European push next year.

Great news in Leeds' league security! There are a lot of points still on offer but with some good teams in-form at the moment it's going to be tough to get anywhere ahead of where you are now!

On the field

Spoiler alert! There was no last game drama like last season as we coasted along to the end of our first Premiership season in a long time. However, the last 7 games can quite easily be put into two differing halves in terms of fortune. 7 Points were picked up from the first 3 games against Liverpool (1-1), Leicester (2-1) and Watford (1-0) as we ground out results in exactly the same fashion as we had done in the previous 31 league games.

However, we started looking like we are off on our Holidays as we than picked up just the 3 points from the last 4 games getting thumped 3-0 by Spurs but more embarrasingly losing to both Newcastle and Huddersfield with just a 1-0 win over Brighton sandwiched inbetween. However that Brighton game did have the significance of guaranteeing us a 9th place finish and with 7th and 8th unlikely we really had nothing to play for in May


A nice top half finish to welcome myself back to the Premiership and one that i am proud of and one that we can build on as we look to get back into Europe sooner or later. Joe Willock was the star of the show and was the only outfielder averaging over a 7 all season. Only Casilla got over a 7 as the Keeper is easily the best i have managed in recent years of playing FM. It meant Willock just edged ahead as the player of the season and i can't argue, with the wonderkid scoring an impressive 9 goals and assisting 4. Not bad considering i was unsure at one point of keeping the loan going after an underpar Championship season.

Still there is much to work on. Defensively at first i thought we had a poor season letting in 54 goals but in closer inspection the problem really came in the games against the top 6 as we conceded a massive 28 goals in just the 10 games picking up just the 6 points. That is over half of the goals we conceded! A tactic overhaul will be needed for these games next season as we are clearly too easy to break down for the big sides. It might mean moving the AMC to a DMC and perhaps going with more counter attacking football rather than our control possession mentality that has done us pretty well over the last 2 seasons.

So onto the transfer plans

Summer plans


So budget has been set and i am pretty happy with the amounts. £50m is a good starting point and the wage budget has gone up by around 25% meaning we have some wiggle room as well. However, what do i have planned?

Goalkeepers
Casilla will remain as No.1 for another season having averaged over 7.00 in both seasons. 17 year old England U21 regen Sherwin Greaves is likely to be the understudy this year as he has progressed better than Bailey Peacock-Farrell who is likely to be loaned out again to get some much needed game time for his own development.

Defenders
An Interesting one this year as there could be a lot of changes depending on how things go. Kamara's loan spell is ending and i am not going to renew despite his talent, instead going with South African Coetzee who is returning from his loan spell with Feyenoord having been granted his work permit. Clyne and Bogle are good enough for the right back slots and Lukaku did ok in his first season. Barry Douglas (player of the year in 18/19) is likely to be moved on to allow a younger prospect to come in and compete with Lukaku at left back. We could also see one of Cooper and Jansson moving on for a new defender and i am not going to rule out the possibility of both if the right offers come in.

Midfielders
Willock is going to be the biggest dilemma as i could bring him back on loan for another season but a permanent transfer is out of the question with Arsenal demanding over £100m for his services. So do i want to keep developing for them or bring in my own player to work with? That is the main question. The other loanee Jack Harrison poses a similar question as i have the option to buy for £22m but was his 6 goals and 4 assists enough to justify that or do i buy a cheaper alternative that again i could groom into a star man. I can't see much else happening in this area as we are pretty well stocked

Strikers

Raul de Tomas did ok with 14 goals in all competitions but he had no competition and quite often or not he would be awful doing nothing. Zero assists also means he doesnt help others score and this is an area we need some work. Shankland is leaving on a free and Bamford is not doing it for me so expect two new strikers in. We do have a couple of decent youngsters we could promote into the side at a push but this will be an area with some movement.

So there we have it, potential new strikers and maybe a mini rebuild at the back. Not a lot to do as i aim for 7th spot next season. The board want top half, the media predict mid table but it is all gung-ho for Europe