Today Garry Monk has hit back at criticism from Jaap Stam, as the war of words continued after our win over Reading on Tuesday night.
Jaap Stam took exception to the "boring boring Reading” chants from the Elland Road crowd, and the sarcastic cheers as the away team passed the ball around inside their own half. Though he managed not to mention the "sh*t scum b*****d” references to his time as a player on the wrong side of the Pennines.
Stam said "If you think this is boring then I think they need to have a look at their own team and how they play. They can say ‘we won’ and of course at the end it’s about the result but if you need to play like that then I don’t want to be a manager. I don’t want to play and just wait and wait and wait. That’s not my type of playing, my type of tactics.”
It would be a massive understatement to say that Stam likes his side to build from the back. The statistics show Reading had 77% of the possession, which makes it sound like they absolutely battered us, but most of this was in areas of the field where they couldn’t do any damage. Once we were winning the game we were quite content to let their defenders pass to each other rather than try to come forward, as they weren’t going to equalise from there.
Leeds went with the usual formation of five in midfield, and Reading found us hard to break down, despite the absence of several of our usual first team members, for one reason or another. Our approach was more direct, and on the night it was far more effective, with Wood taking advantage of some slack marking to get the first, and Doukarra sealing the win from the penalty spot near the end.
Reading only managed two shots on target all night, and those came as time began to run out, and they finally woke up to the fact that they would need to give it a bit more oomph if they were going to get anything out of the game. But we held firm thanks to a fine save from Green and a brave block from Jannson, and a vital three points were ours.
Monk replied to Stam’s comments by telling the Yorkshire Post "It doesn’t really bother me too much but I felt a little bit embarrassed for him to be saying those type of comments. We all want to win games. Sometimes when we don’t win, afterwards emotions are still high and it’s hard to hide your disappointment.”
"We were very happy with our performance and we were the most dangerous team on the pitch. We were clinical and we had the best chances, two goals and a clean sheet. That’s all we’re focused on. I was pleased to see that we could adapt. I’ve got three ways of looking at games - where we set up to attack, where we set up to protect and where we set up to use a balance of both. You’ve seen games this season where we’ve used all three.”
And I’m sure that Leeds fans aren’t going to complain about the performance that won the game on Tuesday. We like our team to have a physical presence, and to move the ball around quickly to put the other side under pressure. And it’s great when it gets the results we need. With Tuesday’s result taking us back to fifth place, let’s hope there is plenty more to come.