Former Chelsea defender Scott Minto has claimed that Javi Gracia "doesn't want to" repeat Jesse Marsch's claims that Leeds United played well despite losing after the Whites lost 2-0 to Fulham in the FA Cup fifth round.
Gracia suffered his first defeat as Leeds manager at Craven Cottage as Leeds bowed out of the competition just shy of the quarter-finals. In truth, the tournament was never the priority for the Spaniard, yet his self-confessed love for the FA Cup would no doubt have left him disappointed with the result.
Leeds simply could not find a way past the Cottagers on Tuesday night and despite what would have been Georginio Rutter's first goal for the club being chalked off for a dubious foul in the build-up, Gracia's side were ultimately undone by two superb finishes in a game where Fulham otherwise created very little.
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And now Minto has claimed that Gracia will want to get Leeds back to winning ways as soon as possible, insisting that the former Watford boss needs to focus on results and not necessarily performance levels.
“Leeds United are down there and scrapping for their lives, trying to survive in the Premier League," Minto told BBC's Football Daily. "And yet performance wise, that was as good as they could possibly put out – they just didn’t score.
“Javi Gracia can take a lot of positives from that but they cannot afford to keep on doing that from now to the end of the season where they played really well but lost the game.
“Jesse Marsch kept on saying that game after game, Javi Gracia doesn’t want to do the same.”
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