Nottingham Forest 3-1 Leeds United: Continuing Theme
I believe in coaching, but after so many years of regressing defenders, I no longer believe in it at Leeds. Perhaps we fell foul of a curse, and need Norman Hunter and Jack Charlton to bless our centre-halves using whichever parts of their fists are most persuasive.
Leeds United continued in some very same-old ways at Nottingham Forest, and are finding habits difficult to lose and form hard to gain.
One thing that continued was young players from the Academy scoring stonking goals. In midweek it was Tyler Denton, setting fire to the top corner of Luton's net like an eighties Millwall fan with a molotov cocktail for a left boot.
Then against Nottingham Forest Kalvin Phillips stepped up, and although his free kick looked further out than was reasonable. Phillips struck it unreasonably well, sending the ball flying through clear air and inside the near goalpost.
Lovely. If that keeps up then we can expect something spectacular from Ronaldo Vieira against Huddersfield, and if those young players want to keep taking it in turns to score the best goals game by game that's absolutely fine by me.
It's worth remembering that last season Giuseppe Bellusci would have taken that free kick, sending the fans behind the goal cowering. Bellusci has gone, but that same-old habit hasn't; that of surrounding our bright young goalscorers with inept defenders who can't defend, who render great goals by our lads meaningless before they're even scored.
Before this game Kyle Bartley and Luke Ayling stood out as new signings who had yet to provoke much aggravation (they all provoke some aggravation eventually), but they both lost that record at Forest. To be fair, neither were as culpable as Liam Cooper, but we've had that from him before. Bartley and Ayling are new, and they're supposed to be better, and now we're know they're not, not really.
Robert Green gets roped in here too, although his solid reputation lasted only four minutes this season. Collectively, this crew were supposed to a) improve the defence and, consequently b) stop us conceding crap goals from set pieces.