Leeds United boss Sam Allardyce pre-Newcastle United press conference every word on Whites changes, survival target, Eddie Gray and Magpies must

For Sam Allardyce’s pre-Newcastle press conference from Thorp Arch today. All the news to follow here.

Who will be with us shortly

Sam takes his seat

“Right, my injuries are Liam Cooper, Stuart Dallas, Tyler Adams and Luis Sinisterra, that’s not bad, just four, right, off we go.”

“I think I saw a fight, a determination and then the ability to improve the performance overall compared to what what they produced in the first 45 minutes and think that having conceded 20 goals in the last however many games, I thought keeping Man City down to two was in the end not not too bad. Given that, we all know that they missed a chance or two but everybody does that. But we scored a goal, we looked better in the second half and a bit of work with attacking and defending, defending and attacking with the players this week hopefully improves their level of performance to get to a higher standard on Saturday, notwithstanding that need for some rest, rest and recovery in between of course and pick a side to play against a Newcastle side that play a completely different way to Manchester City. So we have to work out how to defend against the strengths and and try to exploit their weaknesses.”

“He thinks so, he thinks next week. I think that we’ve got to try and keep everybody fit if we possibly can. I think the squad in general at Leeds is a bit light in terms of numbers. So we have to be very protective of not picking up too many injuries, otherwise it does deplete the squad and of course, what’s even more important today than ever is having quality subs, the best quality subs you could possibly get because you need to use them. When you need to, you need to make the decision to use them, which has put a hell of a lot more pressure on coaches or managers to make the right decisions in terms of substitutes when you’ve got five and of course that will bring its own criticism on whether you’ve made the right choices or not. I thought we did okay with our choices last week because we seemed to, as we made more substitutes, didn’t didn’t waver and improve somewhat and fresh legs and a bit more spiritd and a bit more quality.”

“No, it’s a long time ago. 200 was a long time ago. Was I disappointed? Yes. What did it do to my career? Massive knock back. But ss always, I always recover and move on. It was an opportunity that in the end, I couldn’t avoid the change of ownership that was unexpected. I have no criticism of Mike. It’s his club. He wanted to do what he wanted to do with it at that particular time and made those choices. For me, it was a blow to my career at that particular time because I wanted to take Newcastle as far as I possibly could, like it’s doing now, That was the ambition of me and Freddy Shepherd at the time, but that wasn’t to be.”

“Who complained?” - told that it was Jurgen Klopp and Arteta. Of Klopp...

“Well he time wastes.” Ten Hag

“He time wastes. They all time waste when it’s in the last five minutes when they are winning 2-1. Don’t be daft, that’s rubbish that is. We’ve all been talking about ball in play more than we’ve talked about time wasting and on where the ball in play is or can be improved. But the game is ferocious and quick enough as it is. Players fatigue and players’ injuries and players’ resources are strainedmore than ever before. So if you speed the game up even more and you increase the level of time they are on the pitch even more in running, you’re going to get more and more injuries and more and more crippling injuries than you’ve ever gotten because it’s never been as quick as it is now. And with it being so quick, recovery time becomes of the essence. And then because of so many games, there is no recovery time because there’s no recovery time you get more and more injuries and then you ultimately end up getting more and more chronic injuries which may limit a player’s career to a lot shorter than it should be. But we can’t do anything about that because the players ask for so much money that we have to try and increase our profits and increase our turnover every year to fund the players that are so expensive to bring into Premier League football now.”

“A different way of playing and managing how the play and the players obviously, looking at how they play and obviously trying to remember when they go out on the field what the strengths of Newcastle are to nullify them and what their weaknesses are to try and obviously get a goal to score against them. So you play completely differently to Manchester City.”

“They’ve got some talented players on the front front three and there’s more to come on with Almiron and Maximin as well as the three upfront they started with against Arsenal. There’s a big goal scorer in Wilson which we have to manage. But then at the other end, you can get in behind and you can get down the side of Newcastle if you can break through midfield. It depends on our quality then when we get to the final third and what we decide to do with that final ball. If we don’t get the ball right, we won’t create as many chances we would like to put Newcastle under pressure and to hopefully have something to go forward with because I’d like to score the first goal if possible. That’s very important for us on Saturday. Getting the first goal would be a big lift. It would help us win the game. I’m not saying we would win the game but going a goal down would be a very difficult job, I think, mentally for the players to come back from but if that’s the case they’d have to try and do it. But what we won’t have to do is go daft like they have done before and leave the back door open and conceded two, three and four again.”

“We would still have to win some games. Whether they won or whether they lost we’d still have to win some games to stay up. We won’t stay up with 30 points, nobody’s ever going to do it, nobody ever will. We’ve got nine points to go for. We know if we get nine points which is a massive ask we’ll stay up. If we get six, we might do, if we get five. What are we going to be? I have to say this at this moment in time, I want to be still in it when we play Tottenham, that’s what I want to be. I would be very satisfied if when we play Tottenham we are still in it.”

“Everbody has trained for us to do enough. We’ll make a couple of changes based on what the Newcastle team is and how we want to play against Newcastle so we’ll make a couple of changes which you’ll find out about when the team sheet goes in. Oh, it doesn’t go in anymore does it. When it gets electronically flipped on now. That and the barcode gets on my nerves but never mind.”

“It’s speculation, it’s not worth talking about anymore. You had a big enough headline off me last week, you’re not going to get any more. By the way, all those who criticised me about sounding a bit thick, all I was doing was diversifying off the players onto myself, which was a great tactic that I picked up Alex Ferguson so there was no pressure on the players because I took it all, I took all the stick by ooo look at him and listen to him but there we go. There’s none of that this week, it’s purely and simply focusing on Newcastle and trying to get the three points that we desperately need. But I have said to the players and I will say it now, when we come off the field on Saturday, we can’t afford to lose. We must get something.”

“I loved playing here as the away team, I loved the atmosphere. I came as a manager and the same - and the historical nature of the club. Yes, it might be an old stadium but you see Elland Road, what it stands for, the old days when I was growing up watching that team. I was speaking to Eddie Gray today at great length. He’s got a lot of his grandsons here in the academy but he was looking really fit. I was wondering if he could put his boots on and play because he is the fittest 75 year old I have seen for a long time. But he’s still around the club, still comes into a club and loves it that much but it’s a great football club.”

“It’s a big decision. I don’t mind making big decisions. But whether it’s the right decision, we have to calculate that right. The young lad has got the ability and got the skill, it’s whether we think he could can handle the occassion because this is a cauldron for us to go in and be able to perform at the highest level we can with the pressure that we’ve put on ourselves under by the position that we’re in. So I suppose you could get a youngster that goes in and doesn’t have that amount of stress because he just wants to go in and play football and can play with a bit of freedom, or he could freeze quite easily. But in saying that, there’s many of the players, young or old could do that on Saturday. What I’m hoping for is good mental resilience that allows them to perform at their highest quality. The fear needs to drive them on, the fear of relegation, the fear of losing their Premier League status should make them hopefully fight and fight hard for their status and their position at Leeds United.”

“I am very pleased with the attitude of the players. I think what is or did surprise me is the fact that they have to lift up their energy levels that little bit more to compete at the highest levelbBecause I think that when you’re hammered as much as they’ve been hammered, all of a sudden we call it the lead boots come on and we have to lift the lead boots off and put the lightweight boots back on and get running around as much as we possibly can because without the stamina, the physical effort, the runs, the high speed runs, with intelligence you’ll get nowhere in this game because the only reason you stop playing football is you can’t run anymore. So when you can’t run anymore, you can’t play professional football so we need the highest level of stamina and speed and high intensity running, obviously with intelligence and in the right area and then we need the right amount of skill and delivery and understanding to come together to create opportunities against Newcastle.”

“I think it’s been helpful. I suppose when I looked at it and thought, Man City, Newcastle, West Ham, Tottenham, you know, that’s not going to be easy, but at least it had one week free every week to get to try and help and try and get better and better as each game comes around. The biggest thing that can happen to us is not lose because at least we get a point on the board. If we got three, I’m 40-50 per cent thinking we could stay safe now.”

“No, it won’t be over if it’s over but that would mean that we’re going into two games needing two wins. Even then that might not be enough. But to give ourselves the best chance we’ve got to try and get a point on the board but more importantly three if we can.”