Sam Allardyce will be watching through his fingers as today’s Premier League results roll in. The Leeds United head coach will spend the day putting the finishing touches to a game plan that he believes will be enough to see the Whites end their seven-game winless run and breathe life into their hopes of survival when they take on West Ham United on Sunday.
However, he also knows that Leeds could be facing a mountain the size of Everest to climb by the time they kick-off at the London Stadium if results don’t go their way. At the time of writing Leeds sit just one point off the pace in the survival race, behind Everton and Nottingham Forest, who have managed to climb out of the bottom three in recent weeks.
Both are in action this afternoon with Sean Dyche’s Everton travelling to Wolves, who have already done enough to secure another season of top flight football despite struggling for large periods of the campaign. Forest, on the other hand, take on Arsenal, who will still be reeling from their costly loss to Brighton last weekend.
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Arsenal will be the favourites as they bid to put as much pressure as possible on league leaders Manchester City, but Forest have relied on their home form since their promotion to the top flight and they’ll fancy their chances in the late kick-off. Allardyce will, of course, be hoping to see both rivals beaten handsomely and such a scenario would allow Leeds to clamber out of the bottom three with a win in east London.
There is a chance, though, that Leeds could find themselves four points adrift by kick-off tomorrow and needing a win to avoid being mathematically relegated to the Championship. Only two victories from the last two would do in that instance and they would require a huge favour from Bournemouth at Goodison Park on the final day, too.
It’s a scenario from hell for Leeds and Allardyce, but the head coach knows what he would have to say to channel the pressure.
“That's it, do or die, lads,” Allardyce said ahead of the trip to east London. “Fight to the end, but fight with the right temperament and the right amount of control and don't lose control.
“Certainly don't lose the game plan. In the games I've looked at before I got here it was a loss of control by a team that went a little crazy in terms of just going all out to try and score a goal and end up conceding two, three, four or five.
“So you don't lose control and you stay in the game or you try and get ahead in the game. When it gets to the latter stages, depending on where we are, is where more risk comes into play.”
Pressure can make diamonds, as the old adage goes, but in Leeds’ case it has been their undoing in recent weeks and their draw with Newcastle United was a fine example of that. Patrick Bamford’s missed penalty was more than enough of a demonstration without the two spot kicks Leeds went on to give away after.
Allardyce admits pressure has taken its toll on his side since arriving at the club at the start of May, but he has also seen progress made in the build-up to the clash with West Ham.
“I think it’s pressure,” he said when asked about the reason for the errors. “I mean, we all make mistakes but it's how costly the mistakes.
“There's only one person who can make fewer mistakes than your centre half and that's your goalkeeper and that is a fact of life. So you live as a centre half you live on the edge all the time because if your mistake costs a goal, it’s your mistake. That's why you live on the edge all the time when you're playing in a game.
“The midfielders, centre forwards can make more mistakes and then wait for the next one or whatever it might be but centre halves and goalkeepers it’s full concentration for the 90 minutes we play.”
He added: “I think confidence has grown, I think application has been applied. I think that possession could get better.
“I think we've been so up for it and so frantic to try and do well and close your position down and make life difficult, but when we’ve actually won the ball back we’ve still been so hyper that we haven't been able to just calm down and control ourselves to play the right balls and the right pass more often.
“So the difference between those two is something we've talked about, being calmer when we're on the ball and movements and picking out better passes and retaining possession better. That will hopefully get us up the pitch and more opportunities to score.”
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