Championship: Bristol City- Leeds United (written 09.45 UK time today)

 

I spoke about United and their latest change in head coach ahead of their league opener, a home game with Burnley .....

 

The hosts struggled here at Elland Road last season, which was disappointing after winning three of their first four home starts, but have won their home league opener in each of the last three campaigns, they also raised their game and played their best football against the stronger teams, beating Middlesbrough, Ipswich Town, Derby County and champions Bournemouth and will doubtless be looking to do likewise versus newly relegated Burnley.
 

United took the lead quite late, but conceded an equaliser even later and that has set the tempo for all their games under Rosler so far, also drawing at Reading on Sunday and in a Yorkshire derby at Doncaster Rovers in the Capital One Cup last midweek, where they had to play much of the game with ten men. The match against the Royals was a turgid affair with very few chances and it had a 0-0 look from about the 10th minute onwards, Rosler has his teams well organised and prepared, but is far too negative at times, especially on the road, when drawing or holding a narrow lead, for my liking. However, his team's are very hard to break down and getting a handicap start against newly promoted City, who are pointless so far and under quite a bit of pressure to get at least a point tonight, looks the way to go. I saw the Robins on Saturday, in their 4-2 home defeat to Brentford, City were 2-1 up and had missed good chances to extend that lead, before the match turned on the sending off of Luke Freeman. From that moment on (35th minute), it was all Bees and the away win never looked in doubt. Brentford are very confident with their passing game and the wide open spaces of Ashton Gate (which looks bigger as there are only three sides to the stadium at present) played to their strengths, which meant that for much of the next hour + , City had to work incredibly hard and at times where chasing shadows and the quick turnaround when many players are still coming to terms with life at the higher level, is a big ask on the back of that.
 

They will be without Freeman tonight, he played in central midfield, right at the heart of what was a 3-5-2 and the catalyst of so much of what they did offensively, he was on Saturday (after his departure) and will be today, a very big loss, Freeman was ever present last season, contributing seven goals and 18 assists and for many, was the stand out performer in League 1. City know they are a couple of players short of being competitive in the Championship and made what looked like a bit of a panic bid yesterday of £9m for Andre Gray of the Bees, they have a wealthy owner, but in terms of FFP, this is a signing they cannot really afford (as I type it has still not been completed). Anyway, we will discuss Gray in the future, for now, suffice to say that City are still coming to grips with life at this level, need to strengthen and are without perhaps their best player today. United have won the last six h2h meetings with City ,have scored eight (two or more in each) in their last three visits to Bristol and look good for at least a point and I don't feel that the hosts would be too disappointed with that. We are at a very early stage of the season, but almost 52% of games in the Championship have ended all square, many teams look evenly matched and there is a lot of jostling for position, especially in the transfer market and for now, games in general might continue to be hard to win. Things will probably return to "normal" after the transfer window has closed.

 

 

 

Good Luck.