Leeds United: Meslier, Firpo (Struijk 83), Koch (Shackleton 68), Cooper, Raphinha, Llorente, Rodrigo

Leeds United: Meslier, Firpo (Struijk 83), Koch (Shackleton 68), Cooper, Raphinha, Llorente, Rodrigo, Harrison, Phillips, Gelhardt, Klich (Greenwood 83).

Subs not used: Klaesson, Bate, Hjelde, Cresswell, Kenneh, Gray.

This was our last home game of the season and probably the last time there’ll be Premier League football at Elland Road for at least a year. Before kick off some legends from the Leeds United teams that won the league in 1992 and the FA Cup in 1972 appeared on the pitch and received a standing ovation from the crowd. The current squad’s achievements this season are somewhat more depressing - Leeds set a new Premier League record for yellow cards and we’ve only won four home games - the lowest total in the entire history of the club. We’re also neck and neck with Norwich City in the competition to end the season with the most goals conceded, and look like we’re about to join them (and Watford) on the journey back to the Championship…. 

Our starting line up looked depressingly weak compared with Brighton’s - and their bench was also massively more experienced than ours. Rumours that Patrick Bamford was going to be available proved to be false. Nevertheless, this was a slight improvement on our terrible performances of late. We started off on the front foot and should have scored an early goal from a corner, but unfortunately Liam Cooper got in the way of Joe Gelhardt’s goal-bound shot.

Brighton gradually took control of the game and created several decent chances in the first half apart from the one that led to Danny Welbeck’s goal.

The Leeds players tried hard, but although we’ve been a little more robust defensively since Jesse Marsch took over from Marcelo Bielsa, when it comes to getting the ball forward, it looks like nobody knows what to do anymore. Marsch was touted as the right guy to build on the foundations that Bielsa built, but based on what we’ve seen over the last few weeks, everything his predecessor taught the players about passing and movement seems to have been erased from their collective memory.

A few moments of individual brilliance gave us hope - Mateusz Klich almost equalised just before half time but was thwarted by an excellent save from the Brighton keeper, who also kept out a fantastic strike from Raphinha midway through the second half. We had more of the ball after the break but it looked like we’d get nothing from the game until the third minute of added time, when a great bit of skill from Gelhardt took him past two Brighton defenders, after which he sent in a perfect cross for Pascal Struijk to head in at the far post. How on earth Bielsa kept overlooking Gelhardt in favour of Tyler Roberts is beyond me….

The late equaliser lifted us out of the bottom three, but even if we win our final game next week we can only finish with a maximum of 38 points. Everton and Burnley have two games left and both have a much better goal difference than us. Everton can potentially get 42 points and will definitely finish above us if they win either of their remaining games. Burnley can potentially get 40 points, and a win and a draw will guarantee safety for them. So we need both of our relegation rivals to slip up in order to stand any chance of survival.