Should Leeds be happy with a point against Brentford?
Sunday, 22nd Mar 2026 09:03 by Tim Whelan
Leeds were held to a goalless draw at home to Brentford last night, but was it a missed opportunity to put some distance between us and the other relegation candidates, or another valuable point as we aim for the target of 38 points?
This was the second in the run of ‘winnable’ home games at the end of the season which we all thought would take us to safety once the Man City game was out of the way. This was never going to be an easy match against a team seventh in the table, but we could have done with a win after losing to Sunderland and the draw at Selhurst Park in a game we could well have won.
And yet we failed to break down Brentford’s disciplined back line, and seemed to be mindful at all times of Brentford’s threat on the break, with their pacy and prolific strikers. Brentford came to Leeds with their own ambitions of getting into Europe, so they were never going to give us an easy ride.
The evening did of course begin with a tribute to Christopher Loftus and Kevin Speight, as the vagaries of the fixture calendar meant that this was the closest home game to the anniversary of their murder in Istanbul in 2000. The crowd then turned their backs on the pitch in the 26th minute, as that is the number of years that have now passed since that tragic event.
There was one enforced change to make to the starting line up, with Gudmundsson suspended after his farcical sending off last week, so Bogle came back in while Justin moved across to the opposite flank. Nmecha was the second striker, so it looked like quite an attacking formation, but actually played slightly behind DCL.
And for the first 15 minutes or so we struggled to get into their half, but as the game wore on we started to get more of the possession, albeit without creating any real threat to the Brentford goal. They got lucky when a clearance was whacked straight at Bogle but the rebound fell kindly for Kelleher to gather, and again when DCL beat the keeper in the air, but nobody got to his flick-on.
Nmecha had struggled to get into the game, but tried a fierce long range shot just before the break that Kelleher did well to get down to. Brentford did cause us a bit of anxiety at times, with Kayode’s long throws always looking more effective than Ampadu’s, but in general our defence coped well with the threat of the much vaunted Thiago.
We did hope that Leeds would step it up after the break, but what we got was more of the same, and we were reduced to trying our luck from distance. Aaronson dragged a shot wide from outside the area, and Ampadu launched a fierce drive that might have worked if he hadn’t sent it straight at Kelleher.
At the other end Darlow had to move swiftly off his line a couple of times to deal with some dangerous Brentford counter attacks. This might be another occasion when Farke might me accused of waiting too long to freshen things up, as he waited till the 69th minute before replacing Nmecha and Aaronson with Tanaka and Okafor.
At about this time we had yet another instance of the opposing goalkeeper going down while all his team mates went over for a tactical chat with their boss. Brentford did their best to enact a genuine injury scenario, with the physios making Kelleher do some stretching while the sub keeper warmed up.
But inevitably Kelleher was able to continue with no apparent injury to bother him. Though to be fair, their was no apparent change in Brentford’s tactics after the time-out, just get men behind the ball. I hoped that the fury of the crowd would raise Leeds for the rest of the game, but unfortunately that soon fizzled out.
Tanaka became the next to try his luck from distance, and his shot took a deflection which sent it well wide of the goal. The final change saw Struijk making way for James, which led to a formation change, probably a 4-3-3. I don’t know Struijk would have come off anyway, but he had just landed awkwardly after going over the top of Thiago and injured his neck.
James did get a couple of decent crosses in and we produced a series of corners, but to no avail as the Brentford defence held firm. There was even an anxious moment right at the end as Brenford had a free kick in a dangerous position deep into injury time, but the wall did it’s job (specifically Bijol) and the danger was cleared.
So 0-0 it was, and when it was all over Daniel Farke was keen to stress the positives, namely the defensive performance, when he spoke to LUTV. “I am pretty happy with the clean sheet, I am pretty happy that we controlled all their counter attacks. They are such a dangerous side out of counter attacks”.
“In and around their box was of course missing a little bit but we are probably the only side who has played two times against Brentford who has dominated in both games in each and every statistic. It was still a tight game because they did not allow any clear-cut chances. We have to bring our mentality in, our fitness level in, our tactical flexibility to change a base formation to ask questions”.
“We have tried everything today. We started the game more or less with two strikers and a number ten on the pitch. Later on, we even wanted to go a bit more risky of course because we sacrificed also a centre-back and brought a more offensive thinking player on.” But how pleased should we really be about getting a point from this game via another clean sheet?
Much has been made of the fact that we move another point away from our rivals, but of course they are all playing today. It’s difficult to say what result we want from the anxiety fest that is Spurs v Forest, but what bothers me is that West Ham are playing the horrendously out of form Aston Villa, so will probably pick up points there.
There’s no telling if the mythical 38 point total will actually be enough to keep us up this season, we might need more with all the teams around us capable of picking up points, even Tottenham. Clean sheets are good, but we haven’t scored ourselves in the league for four and a half games now, and we need to start getting wins rather than endless draws.
The two home games against Wolves and Burnley are now doing a lot of heavy lifting in all our calculations of how many points we’re going to end up with, and wins in both those games are starting to look well crucial. Having to go to the London Stadium on the final day with our status still in doubt really doesn’t bear thinking about.
Reuters
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