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Leeds United suffers relegation from Premier League

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Leeds United’s horrendous English Premier League campaign came to an end on Sunday with the Yorkshire club suffering relegation from the top-flight.

Sam Allardyce’s squad lost 4-1 at Elland Road to Tottenham, being condemned to the English Football League Championship for next season. Weston McKennie started and played 60 minutes for Leeds United in the final match of his loan spell from Juventus, while fellow American midfielder Brenden Aaronson played 31 minutes off the bench.

Leeds United joins Leicester City and Southampton as the three relegated squads this season.

Harry Kane’s second minute opener boosted Spurs in front at Elland Road, putting Leeds United under early pressure in front of its home supporters. The pressure continued early in the second half as Pedro Porro extended Tottenham’s advantage to 2-0 in the 47th minute.

Jack Harrison pulled one goal back for Leeds in the 69th minute before Kane re-extended lead to 3-1 just two minutes later. Lucas Moura capped the dominant road performance for Tottenham in stoppage time, capping the final score at 4-1 and clinching an eighth place finish for the visitors.

McKennie made 20 combined appearances for the Lilywhites after arriving on loan from Juventus in January. The U.S. men’s national team midfielder will now head back to Turin to determine what’s next for him at club level.

Aaronson, 22, registered 39 combined appearances this season, scoring one goal and adding three assists. The USMNT attacker started off the season strong, but struggled for form during the second half of the campaign.

Fellow USMNT midfielder Tyler Adams was one of the few bright spots for Leeds United despite missing the final two months of the season due to a hamstring injury. Adams made 26 combined appearances for Leeds United, logging over 2,200 minutes.

Leeds United will now prepare for a busy summer ahead of a grueling Championship schedule set to start in August.

Comments

    • I donā€™t believe Jesse rumors anymore in last 3 months there have been 3 deals that were ā€œall but doneā€ that then amounted to nothing.

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  1. I guess Aaronson has a relegation release clause in his contract and Leeds are expecting it to be triggered by other teams.

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  2. Long only played for Jesse for a season and a half not sure how tied he’d be to him.
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    Leeds appeared to have tried to go in hard for Cody Gakpo according to Jesse it was 99% done and then Gakpo decided to wait for the WC to increase his stock. You put Gakpo in for Bamford they probably stay up. When that failed they tried deKetelaer but he went to Inter. So they dropped to Sinisterra who wasn’t bad but he was injured half the year. I wonder where the team would have finished had they gone for Richards instead of Aaronson, hindsight always 20/20. Brendan should look for a move to the Netherlands where he won’t get “little brothered” off the ball all the time.

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    • JR,

      No doubt Brenden does look like Peter Parker, pre-radioactive spider.

      BUT. there are more than a few smaller players in the PL and the other Top 5 leagues. In Barca’s tika taka heyday many of those guys were scrawnier . Brenden is taller than David Villa. Odegaard is the same height and 4 pounds lighter.

      The problem isn’t Brenden’s body, it’s his head.

      He has been playing w/o confidence since before the World Cup and certainly showed it in Qatar. That wasn’t the Brenden all real Americans love. Salzburg was very consistent in how they played and BA knew exactly what he had to do. I’m not sure Leeds was so consistent and once a bit of uncertainty and loser mentality gets in your head getting it out of your head is not so easy.

      Players w/o confidence are tentative.

      That absolutely makes them a micro second slower. It means getting caught at the last second instead of getting away clean or trying to get the ball to your right foot instead of taking it first time with your left or with the outside of your right foot Rivelino style, and getting your shot blocked.

      There was a time when many here had him better than Gio or Pulisic. Maybe that was because he played for the most part in games where he and his team were always beating up other teams. So he always came to the USMNT in a great frame of mind and could then beat up on CONCACAF weaklings.

      That sense of confidence does matter. Faking it until you make it really does work. Until you play real players who really know how to shut a guy down on a regular basis.

      Total speculation here but maybe getting beaten up in the EPL in general, where his skills don’t necessarily stand out got him worried. In other words, EPL defenders are overall a notch above what he had been used to and the team he played for sucked. Little support. So EPL defenders got into his head. got him to think.

      At that level, if you don’t instantly do what you need to do instinctively on muscle memory, if you have think, you’re already dead.

      He’s not unskilled. But he’s not Andres Iniesta (who is shorter and the same weight as Brenden) either. Brenden is going to need better coaching than what Jesse gave him. and he needs to stay at a high level so he can prove to himself to himself. Get back on that saddle now.

      Did Jesse do a shit job with him at Leeds? What do y’all think? Does the Pope shit in the woods? Is a Bear Catholic?

      If he goes to Eredivisie I don’t think he comes back to the EPL. He should go to Germany or stay in the EPL if he can find a manager who thinks he can be rebuilt.

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  3. I went back to look at Marsch’s record vs. the other managers this year on a points per game basis (premier league only). Unless I did my numbers wrong (which I might have). Marsch averaged 0.9 pts/game. The interim crew averaged .33 pts/game. Gracia averaged 1.0 pts/game and Allardyce .25. Sooo….. Leeds fired the best two managers and saw an immediate drop in point average both times. Solid.
    It seems Marsch arguably was keeping a team that was barely competitive in the PL at the bottom of the league (just above the drop when he left).
    Note that Leeds finished on 31 points. With Gracia’s average over the last 3 games, they would have had 34. With Marsch’s for the whole season 34.2 (projection is the .2). Even with the best managers of the three, they would have been just short of safety. Suggests maybe there really isn’t that much difference between marsch and gracia, and Allardyce did nothing (though with 4 games and 3 pretty top teams it was a hard ask).

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    • Mr. dhamr,

      Good analysis.

      Bielsa performed a miracle getting Leeds promoted in the first place.
      In his last season they were deteriorating.
      Whether that’s because ownership and whoever the ā€œtransfer teamā€ was werenā€™t supporting his transfers properly or because Bielsa wasn’t doing a good job with them, I donā€™t know.
      By the time Jesse came in, he gave them a good bounce. And being so late in the season that ā€œbounceā€ was perfectly timed to keep them up.
      I think the management thought Jesse was similar enough to Bielsa that he could keep this zombie version of Bielsa’s best team going.
      But that was just an illusion and false economy.

      Jesse is a good manager not a genius. What Jesse inherited was a dying zombie. Phillips and Rafinha, two really important players for Bielsa were gone. Bamford, a very important player, might as well have left. And Rodrigo was always hurt. Harrison had no one left to play with. And the rest were truly a Championship or maybe a League One side.

      I donā€™t know what went on behind the scenes. Jesse may have had champagne taste but was instead definitely put on a beer budget. He got quantity but not necessarily quality. Or he got kids who were projects and will be great in the future but not right now. Sort of like Jesse.

      Ownership needed to get away from the Bielsa model because no one, certainly not Jesse, could make his Frankenstein work.

      The had two choices:
      1,Support Jesse adequately in the transfer market. Get rid of whoever their transfer team was and hire a real good one. Let them remake the team in Jesseā€™s vision not Bielsaā€™s. Jesse needed to completely remake the team. He needed more players than he signed and better ones. Whether that was Jesse’s fault or the ownershipā€™s team I don’t know. If it isnā€™t working fire Jesse before the January window.
      2.Fire Jesse after the end of last season. Bring in a better manager and technical director and do a much better job with those transfers. As it is the best or at least the most promising of Jesseā€™s transfers(Willie, Summerville, Rutter etc.) will all get snapped up. As for the Americans, Tyler and Weston should be okay, Brenden may need to go back to MLS. Harrison will stay in the EPL.

      Leeds are a bad team. They might even get relegated to League One.
      The bottom line is they were doomed once Bielsa left. The ownership team were not that competent and got lucky with Bielsa. Once his magic wore off they were exposed.

      Jesse would not be the end of the world as the USMNT manager. But they can do better if they try.
      Heā€™ll definitely give Aaron Long, one of his favorites, a shot at the 2026 World Cup.

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  4. We can debate whether Jesse was given enough time. However, did any of his transfer signings have good seasons? Rocca? Kristensen? Aaronson? Gnoto? Sinisterra? McKennie? Ritter? Adams had a pretty good start but his season was shortened by injury missing the last two months. Leeds simply didnā€™t have the talent.

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    • I think if they would have stuck it out with Marsch itā€™s far more likely they would have survived. His focus should have been shoring up the back line a bit more. Gnonto is a legitimate prospect and potential star.

      B. Aaronson made the move to the Prem to soon. To be honest he should have stayed at Salzburg one more season.

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      • Honestly if Tyler stays healthy they might have stayed up. They averaged .34 more pts per game with Tyler. That would have given them 4 more points 35 pts for the season. If you add in an extra pt or 2 from Wes playing better alongside his good friend they are there.

      • Johnnyr has it right. Their biggest problem was giving up goals and Adams was the key to their defense. One of my biggest complaints about US players is that they aren’t tough enough. How many times have we seen Pulisic on the ground waving his arms in complaint while play goes on? How many times have you seen US players put the kibosh on stars on other teams? Tyler Adams is the exception. He gives no quarter and will commit fouls when necessary, is unafraid to take a card for the team, yet rarely gets red. We need more like him and so does Leeds.

    • Gnonto was excellent when he arrived, played incredibly inspiring ball all thru jesse’s time there…and got absolutely NO love from the english officials. did you watch those games? BA was a wonderful underneath when paired with Rodrigo above him (when he was healthy) throughout the 1st half of the season. Roca was not the problem, lol, tho Llorente sure was, and while Struik played hard, he’s a center back playing fullback, and it showed too often. Kristensen never adapted. if Adams didn’t play, the D was toast

      transfers a mixed bag.

      Bamford unfortunately gets a lot of the grief here; he scuffed so many attemtps, was an absolute nightmare in Jesse’s last game, for example (3 muffs, any of which on goal could have saved Jesse). He was great for Bielsa, but clearly the champioshio is his level; he was terrible in the top flight.

      Rutter barely arrived before Jesse got canned…because the fans whined like the loser English fans they are.

      That team played hard for Jesse, but got no support from the horribly biased english league…no surprise

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  5. To be totally honest besides Reyna producing with limited minutes, Balogun making the switch, Pepi scoring goals, and P. Aaronson and Paredes seeing sporadic minutes in the Bundesliga for their teamsā€¦. I havenā€™t really been that excited about Americans abroad this year.

    Been more excited by how many American youth players have been playing and getting significant minutes in MLS.

    Sucks for Leeds but both McKennie and Adams will move on while I think A year or two in the Championship for B. Aaronson will be good for him.

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    • Booth was hot for a minute or two in the fall. Ream and Robinson had a great run at Fulham. Tessman being an integral part inVenezia getting to the playoffs. Mark McKenzie anchoring Genk to the regular season lead although it looks like they might come up short. Reynolds finding his form for Westerloo. There were a lot of negatives especially with our ā€œtopā€ names but it was better than we might think. 10 years ago weā€™d call this a breakout success.

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    • It wasn’t all that long ago that the US didn’t have even half as many players in top 5 leagues as we have now. It used t be that anyone starting in Europe was a guaranteed US national team player. Gooch was one of our best defenders for a long time, yet spent most of his time in Belgium, as one example. We have a lot more depth and more quality than in the past. Be grateful for what we have.

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      • Do you remember those days when we’d cheer if the USMNT completed three passes? I sure do, the Ricky Davis days.

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