Leeds United: Monk's man given the green light for a reason '“ Hay

If football is guilty of discriminating against older professionals, as Rob Green intimated last week, then at least criticism is oblivious of age. Loris Karius, Liverpool's goalkeeper of choice for the time being, is 23, new to England but still fair game for some cutting analysis.
Rob Green clears his lines.Rob Green clears his lines.
Rob Green clears his lines.

The past few days have been all about him. His age won’t protect him and neither will Liverpool’s position in the Premier League.

What matters to Karius is Jurgen Klopp and the reassurance of a coach who is happy with him. At Leeds United, and for Rob Green, the scenario is no different. Green has a few marks against him – cheap concessions, erratic distribution and evenings like Friday when Brighton peppered the corridor of uncertainty and made his stature shrink – but he is Garry Monk’s man.

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Football, to use Green’s words, might be wary of a goalkeeper who turns 37 next month but his head coach is not. Monk deals with the moments of frailty in the way that Klopp dealt with Karius’ caving-in at Bournemouth a fortnight ago.

“It says nothing about him as a keeper,” Klopp said. “It happens.”

So how does Green, in light of questions about him, compare to his peers in the Championship? It is a pertinent question since Leeds, to the naked eye of those who follow the club, have been a different animal defensively this season. Or a different animal since Monk paired Kyle Bartley with Pontus Jansson and drew a line under a month of chopping and changing at centre-back. But statistically the picture is more blurred despite the assurance Monk’s players give off. Leeds have conceded at the same rate as they did in the 2015-16 season – 22 goals after 20 games – and are giving away more chances by a very fractional margin. It is something of an irony when the club sit nine points better off.

What Leeds have been effective at this season is tipping the balance of tight matches with a touch more potency in attack. Monk’s side have not, conversely, been harder to beat. Regardless of what the league table says, they have lost more of their first 21 matches than they did under Uwe Rosler and Steve Evans. Where Rosler and Evans fell short was in finding ways to eek victories out of even, on-the-edge fixtures. A year ago 21 games had already yielded eight draws. Monk’s squad have drawn only twice. So it is that that means Leeds are nine places higher in the table.

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Green, by his own admission, has been something of a bit-part player in this, while remaining ever present in the Championship. There are games where, as he said himself, “people say you never had anything to do” and few in which Leeds have been genuinely under siege. Even at Brighton, where they played for more than an hour with 10 men, both goals were penalties and Albion’s shots on target totalled seven. Nottingham Forest in late August were the last side to score more than twice against Monk’s.

Brighton, as their league position suggests, are hugely economical in conceding rarely and scoring as many goals as they need. Their first-choice goalkeeper, Leeds-born David Stockdale, has conceded all of nine times and was safe as houses on Friday night.

Stockdale averages more saves a game than Green and they are on a par when it comes to claiming crosses but where Stockdale stands out is in making almost four saves between every goal he concedes. Derby County’s Scott Carson is the only Championship player who can compete with that. Reading’s Ali Al-Habsi and Newcastle’s Karl Darlow both rank closer to three and Green produces fewer than two. On the basis of that it is safe to say that the Championship has stronger last lines of defence.

But attention on Green’s aerial dominance, the command of the box which keepers are expected to have and which he struggled to exert at The Amex, overlooks the distinct way in which Leeds defend set-pieces. Bartley spoke about their organisation in September, revealing how assistant coach Pep Clotet suggested that Jansson and Chris Wood operate as free men with no other duty than to attack the ball. Tactically, Leeds don’t look to Green to dominate those situations. Bartley himself has made as many clearances as all but four players in the Championship. Jansson has chipped in with well over 100. Only one striker, Reading’s Yann Kermorgant, is contributing a higher tally in that respect than Wood and the system at Leeds is very much ingrained.

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The events on Friday leading to Brighton’s first penalty and Kalvin Phillips’ dismissal was an example of organisation gone wrong.

Things do go wrong in the heat of matches and Leeds are not infallible. Monk has never tried to pretend that they are. It was he who reacted to their win over Aston Villa – a rousing result in front of a happy home crowd – by warning his players that they were not playing well enough to last the pace in the Championship. His message about necessary improvement has been consistent and so has his acceptance of certain failings. Green touched on that on Friday night, saying: “With the best will in the world, if you play perfect every week you wouldn’t be here. You’d be playing somewhere else.”

That applies to him as much as anyone and he knew his place when he signed for Leeds, taking a contract far below the value of his previous deal at Queens Park Rangers. This is not the peak of his career or the peak of his ability but he is holding it together and Leeds hardly look like a broken or incommunicado unit with him behind the defence.

For that reason it is perfectly understandable if Monk sees no reason to fix it.