Sheffield Wednesday (A): Preview

It is a quick turnaround for Leeds United on Friday night at Sheffield Wednesday after scraping a win over lowly Stoke City on Wednesday night. Daniel Farke said it was his favourite win so far this season …. probably because the second half performance was the worst they have played yet and still managed to get over the line with the three points. The Owls are second bottom on the same number of points as Stoke but have been in good form recently, winning 4 out of their last 5 games, so it looks as though we might be in for another difficult night against a team fighting for survival. Leeds don’t seem to have any injury worries apart from long term absentees and I am wondering if Farke will be tempted to give Archie Gray a midfield role. Connor Roberts has impressed when he has come on from the bench and having played from the start on Wednesday I can’t see him dropping out and after Archie had a rest on Wednesday it looks likely that he will play. He has been one of our best players and was magnificent in midfield in the cup game at Chelsea. Dan James will definitely keep his place after his “Bass and Bligh” man of the match award on Wednesday and it would be good to see Matteo Joseph starting the game as he was excellent when he came on for Bamford. I expect Farke to stick with Patrick, he rarely makes changes like that.

This is such a vital game with our rivals winning in midweek too. Southampton had their game postponed and they will have two games to rearrange now as their match against Leicester will need a new date as they play Chelsea in the next round of the cup. Might be a bit of fixture congestion for them which takes a bit of pressure off Leeds, though our main concern of course is the top two. It is hard to explain the performance on Wednesday night. The first half, once Leeds had got going, was good, and they should have had a bigger lead than 1-0 at half-time. Maybe the pressure got to them, it was so important to win and Stoke were lively and up for it. Let’s hope Leeds can quieten the Hillsborough home crowd and do a professional job and come back with the points and put some pressure on the top two for their Saturday games. We now are in the home straight with 2 months left of the season. Anything can happen but I don’t like being in third place. It is going to be difficult to win auto promo now and we must be favourites to have to settle for the playoffs unfortunately.

By David Dean