This evening we welcome Daniel Farke and his Leeds United squad to St. James’ Park.
Daniel has done an excellent job at Elland Road, leading the club to promotion last season and establishing them at this level.
They have shown they can cause problems for any team in the league, and we will need to handle this today to achieve the right result.
We approach the game in a good moment and boosted by back-to-back Premier League wins. We travelled to Burnley at the end of last year knowing we’d have to match their physical threat, especially at Turf Moor. We made a really fast start when Joelinton capped his return to the team by giving us the lead after just two minutes. Just five minutes later, Yoane Wissa doubled our lead on his full league debut.
We know two-nil is always a tricky scoreline, and Burnley found a way back into the match midway through the first half which changed the feeling in the stadium and gave them encouragement. The players deserve credit for how they responded to this setback, and we managed the remainder of the half well, despite the pressure we knew we’d face.
In the second half, we created chances to extend our lead and make the game safe, but when that didn’t happen, we needed to show the other side of our game and fight for the points. We stood up to the challenge really well, showed a collective desire to defend and when a chance came late on, Bruno Guimarães was on hand to secure another win on the road and an important three points.
We took that positivity into our last home game against Crystal Palace, who we found a tough team to break down. Despite creating plenty of chances in the first half and finding the net only to have the goal ruled out by VAR, we went into half time with nothing to show for our efforts, despite dominating possession.
The challenge is then to stay patient and stick to the game plan, which the players did extremely well, and were rewarded when another goal from Bruno gave us the lead late in the second half. Once again the players worked incredibly hard to protect that lead, handled the inevitable pressure from Palace, and found a way to score again when Malick Thiaw secured the win.
The league is very tight and consecutive wins give us a platform to push on, but we know we need to continue to show this consistency if we are to back up these results. This is helped by welcoming back from injury some important and experienced players, giving us plenty of depth for what feels like a season-defining month ahead.
We also continue to be helped by your incredible support, whether it’s getting over the line at Burnley, or helping us to remain patient at home to Palace. On both occasions the support was a vital ingredient in helping achieve the right result, and to reward our fans with two wins is the best way to say thank you.
We will definitely need all of your support in the weeks ahead, as we aim to continue moving up the league, and compete in the Champions League and both domestic cups.
Eddie Howe
