Seems to me that TA is the type of player who fills a key gap in DMid for a squad like Leeds that need that high energy, non stop leader to protect and defend. Wes is not a natural dMid - he is a natural box to box - BUT - different from Tyler - he needs quality players around him to truly shine. He did not have that at Schalke and it was a struggle ... he showed much better at Juve. Folks can say all day long - well he should have taken the reins and helped Leeds even more and as EPL player he should have shouldered the leadership burden ... but Wes just is not that type of player. There is a reason Tyler is the US team captain. But that does not mean that Wes is not a good EPL caliber midfielder. Leeds were in deep trouble once it became clear that Bamford's sell by date is done, and once Tyler got hurt. I just think that the crux of the situation is that Leeds does not have many good players .... they had Phillips and Rafinha and James .... got Wes on loan, purchased Aaronson and Adams. Bamford stunk up the joint this year and Tyler got injured. If one of those two had not occurred - they might not have been relegated. Those two pieces were far more important to the Leeds downfall than Wes's performance, or the fact Marsch and Gracia were both shown the door. Yes I am a homer - but the treatment that Wes and Pulisic have received is just unwarranted .... the lack of skewering that English players receive compared to Wes and Pulisic is simply ridiculous and evidence of the confirmation bias.
As others have stated, it may not just be their personality or even skill that is hated; somehow they represent something more to the fans, like the physical symbol of what they deem 'wrong at the core of their club.' And they are wrong for it, but hard to change perceptions of some of these ppl. The Pulisic one is most shocking to me. As much as fans and some keyboard warriors try to gloss over his involvement, he was a KEY player in Chelsea qualifying for and winning them their 2nd Champions League title. That deserves more respect than what he has earned, even if he is no longer up to that level lately. I have a feeling in 5-10 years, CP will have more respect from some of the Chelsea fanbase, as fickle as they are.
In 5-10 years the Chelsea fan base will be mainly entirely different people, specially if they stop winning titles. Bunch of plastics.
Basically eveyone except Adams deesrves plenty of blame for the season, we can all quibble about amounts and who deserves more or less, but it was pretty ugly all around.
I was actually ok with Leeds firing Marsch at the time, made sense to me. In fact, I think they may have waited too late. But to be fair, I think Leeds may have survived if they kept JM. The metrics look like they had the best shot under him (compared to the 2 following managers). But we will never know for sure. I do contend that if they somehow survived with Jesse, it probably would have been 17th again and he would have been fired anyway. Like the poster above said, the blame can go to everyone, as the club does appear to be in shambles, from the top and the board, down to some indifferent/coddled players and some that were just not good enough at this level.
McKennie was poor and looks overweight. I like him, he has shown a lot of the old-timer grit for the NT, but he's not so good a player to afford slacking. He can be good only when he's 100% into it, he's not gifted like Puli or Reyna.
If I'm a newly promoted club and had the option to sign Adams, Aaronson and McKennie or 3 English players from Leeds, the 3 Americans are the easy choice. Wes under performed expectations but that midfield was just dreadful once Adams was injured.
I didn't think Wes was that bad, nor particularly lethargic. Who's got an easy line on one of those "how much ground donut boy covered" stats. That would be interesting.
I was recently sad to discover that most of the public stats sites don't report distance covered. Not sure if that's a result of OPTA et al wanting money to access those stats, or if teams are reluctant to share that data publicly.
The beauty of relegation is that all fans can do after the fact is mock, degrade, make fun of anyone and everyone they can, in any way to vent about their upcoming misery. No big deal. It‘s beautiful and true football! Great, isn‘t it? Want to know what‘s stupider. Decide a league championship after 30 plus matches on goal difference. Why? We have always done it that way and changing it is insanity!!!!! It‘s not pure! Europe has plenty of idiocy. To bad it takes stuff like this for folks to figure out how wonderful it is.
Yes indeed - America has the worst systems in the world. Except for all the rest. Venting their upcoming misery on the players reminds me of Don Imus - "I am not happy unless you are miserable". But I guess for some it is entertaining ... kind of like a NASCAR wreck.
Why many of you care so much about what English fans say about Yank players is a mystery to me. Why do you subject yourself to such nonsense? Their fans have no more sense than our fans.
I don’t think it bothers people all that much except and so far as it affects decisions on the pitch. But there is a tremendous volume of it and it is difficult to avoid, impossible really. So for many of us we keep quiet until it hits a particular volume or concentration, and then we comment on it. You can just ignore our comments, and you don’t need to ascribe any particular massive amount of angst to the commentor. Unless you want to for some reason. 100%. The Yanks involvement started the spiral downwards. They signed McKennie, Marsch and Aaronson. Have any US owners actually had a good relationship with their fans in the UK?— Ampaduyaloveme?! (@bullockleeds) May 31, 2023
While the Fenway group has made a few missteps, like trying to trademark "Liverpool," I'm not entirely sure why they are hated. They brought in Klopp, and under their watch Liverpool has won and is now expected to be fighting for titles every year. That wasn't really true before. I hate the idea of the Superleague, but I wouldn't count that as a mistep, because if it happens, you definitely want to be one of the teams in it. Have they loaded Liverpool with debt like the Glazers and ManU? If not, then yeah that one sort of make me scratch my head. I don't think anyone needs to be thankful to a bunch of billionaires making obsene amounts of money, just saying from a sporting perspective, they've done pretty well for Liverpool.
Bruce - I don't care other than in my support for our US players overseas and hoping they get a fair shot (to be treated no better and no worse than a player from any other part of the world).
Erm, we're talking about Leeds fans. They're generally accepted as having less sense than the UK average, stemming from a sense of frustrated greatness that comes from being a "big club gone bad".
the *good* news is Wes and TA are not going to be at Leeds next season. Some folks seem to think it will be awesome for BA to spend another year with them in the EFLC, however. I think he will move, but we might get to luxuriate in the warm welcome of the yorkshire fans for another season just yet. And, of course, the compare and contrast with Wes will be pretty simple. Juve seasons. Leeds season. Next season. One of these things will likely not be like the others. Question will be: which one?
This is the dumbest analogy I've ever seen on these boards. To compare a military deployment with a prima donna professional athlete making millions not being able to perform on the road or during a loan. Really?
My point was that the people who specialize in getting the best out of their folks while far away from home understand the impact being away from home has on the mind and body. I never compared anything else about being in the military to being a professional soccer player. The interesting thing about the reaction to my benign comment related to performance away from home is interesting considering I never hear anyone complain when a pro athlete talks about a game as a “war” or “battle” or the like. If I were the type to hero worship every person who volunteers for a job in the military, whether they ever did anything heroic or not, I’d probably get more irritated by that than someone referencing the need for them to go home after being away for a while.