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News
BBC pundit reacts to Rodrigo’s display in Leeds defeat to Crystal Palace
Simon Walton has told that Rodrigo was poor throughout Leeds United’s defeat to Crystal Palace on Sunday, and criticised Jesse Marsch for not changing things up front sooner at Selhurst Park.
Leeds clearly have a lot of work to do. They started brilliantly against Palace and took the lead through Pascal Struijk. However, they failed to make the most of being on top. Patrick Bamford missed a golden opportunity.
And Palace started to grow into the contest. They equalised during the first-half. And the Eagles were absolutely dominant after half-time. Ebere Eze was able to score the late winner for Patrick Vieira’s men.
Rodrigo was poor
Worryingly, Leeds rarely looked like scoring in the second-half. Bamford was taken off just after the hour. And without him, the Whites struggled to get themselves up the pitch.
Rodrigo went up front at that stage. However, he made little impression on the game.
Marsch waited until the 84th minute to make a change up front. Joe Gelhardt came on for Marc Roca, with Rodrigo dropping back a little more.
Walton was underwhelmed with Rodrigo’s performance, and criticised Marsch for not seeing him struggling sooner.
“I think something needed to change a bit earlier than what it did. I think it looked like Rodrigo had run his race, I thought he was poor throughout,” .
“He did okay in the first-half. But particularly in the second-half, I thought he was poor. And I thought it should have been faster and a lot sooner than what it was.”
It seems a long time ago that Rodrigo was leading the Premier League scoring charts. Of course, the Spaniard started with four goals in three.
A couple of those goals were moments of real quality. He scored a brilliant header against Chelsea, and a very good opener at Southampton before that.
And he has had to deal with an injury more recently. But it does appear that Rodrigo is dealing with the same inconsistency that has plagued his Leeds spell.
Obviously, he was not the only player who played poorly against Palace. Walton was extremely critical of Liam Cooper’s display.
But it is troubling that Rodrigo is going through another disappointing patch. Leeds did not sign another first-team striker in the summer. And the supporters may fear that that may come back to haunt them.