'We can't vacate midfield' - ex Leeds United man on Manchester United, Joe Gelhardt minutes and Raphinha surprise

The Leeds United performance at Goodison Park was nothing like what I was expecting.

If you look at recent displays, we’ve either been really very good or bang average and, unfortunately, it was the latter at Everton, which was so disappointing. We never even got into the game, we didn’t start correctly.

You have to give credit to Everton because the way they started was so impressive, really high energy, on the front foot from the first whistle. The formation was a huge problem in that first half; Marcelo Bielsa has come out and said that, but the space in midfield was just enormous.

One or two of Frank Lampard’s men were exceptional. Dominic Calvert-Lewin hasn’t played much but the way he held the ball up was excellent and Richarlison gave us a bit of a torrid time. It was a real struggle. Lampard has come up against Leeds many a time and will have made it nice and clear that there’s no ifs or buts, you’ve got to put that intensity in and then you can try and compete and show how good you are. They came out of the blocks flying and we never looked like we could match them. Their confidence just kept growing and, for us, it went the other way. We had a couple of opportunities, Rodrigo hitting the bar twice, but that was out of the ordinary and there were no other shots on target while our goal was peppered. Had it not been for a quite incredible save from Illan Meslier in the second half, it would have been worse. It was not what was required or what the lads wanted to produce.

You look back to the West Ham game and Raphinha was absolutely brilliant. Sometimes he’s unplayable. It’s very difficult to maintain that sort of level. Recently his form has dipped and he’s been strangely subdued and, even the quality of his delivery has been poor. Even saying all that, I was still a little surprised he came off at half-time at Everton. We were crying out desperately for someone to anchor the midfield, we were crying out for Adam Forshaw as soon as Robin Koch moved back into the defence. Allan was clever, keeping Rodrigo further up the pitch so that big gaping hole was there and Mateusz Klich’s natural game is to move so as soon as he moved out of that area we had a problem. What was better in the second half was Forshaw, more than anything else.

I feel for Tyler Roberts because, ideally, I think you’d have liked to see him go and play out of the limelight so he could get some confidence and some minutes under his belt and show what he’s all about. Before he got the last injury, I thought he was starting to do that, he was looking brighter and showing what Bielsa is seeing in him in training. That injury came and it’s back to square one. It’s difficult for Tyler because you’ve got this young lad Joe Gelhardt on the bench and I think he really should be getting some more minutes. I’m not sure what else Gelhardt is supposed to do and, if he’s at the club, we need to use him. You can tell the young lad has got ability so when do you expose him to the wider footballing audience? Bielsa makes the decisions and, unfortunately, Roberts is feeling the brunt of that.

Stuart Dallas coming off at Everton was a huge blow because he doesn’t just play one position, he plays so many that he can help you change things around in any game.

Leo Hjelde came on and played really well. He was one of the better players out there and, for a young man, that was really impressive. I was really concerned when he went down because of the way he hit the ground and the way he was waving in the air. He got up, but he didn’t come back on and limped down the tunnel. Let’s hope neither injury was as serious as it looked because we’ll need everyone we can get our hands on for the Manchester United game.

We’ll need to up our level of performance and I’m sure tactically we’ll be better and Bielsa will get it right. There are so many people waiting for this one; it’s been such a long time since we played them in front of a full crowd at Elland Road. I played in many of these games and they live in the memory, the atmosphere, the feeling around the place. Elland Road is bouncing almost all the time at the minute but get Manchester United in the place and it will go to another level.

These lads are going to feel it. They haven’t played against Manchester United in these circumstances and they’ll need to understand what it’s about. They’ll hopefully feed off that and perform to their highest level. You look at Manchester United and what they’re going through and hope to try and take advantage of that but we cannot give them any sort of advantage or a leg up. We cannot make mistakes, we have to be at it and we cannot vacate the midfield. At our best we can give them a right good game.

A win would be huge for us. After West Ham, I looked at the fixtures and thought if we could win against Newcastle everything would look so different. It hasn’t gone like that at all and suddenly we’re looking around us again. We know we can reach heights; we haven’t done it anywhere near often enough this season. A result against Manchester United could really lift us for a tough, tough week. Results are so very important right now and this one would mean a heck of a lot to everyone.