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Calls to drop Illan Meslier have become louder as the season has progressed - PA/Martin Rickett
Loyalty is an admirable quality in football, and to be commended in the right circumstances, but the question for Leeds United manager Daniel Farke is has it also made him blind to the deficiencies of goalkeeper Illan Meslier?
Certainly Leeds supporters have seen enough to argue the 25-year-old has become a liability rather than an insurance policy in goal.
Meslier is making so many mistakes, leading to so many goals, that it could cost Farke’s side automatic promotion. Anger is rising and Farke’s refusal to drop the Frenchman is akin to juggling with a hand grenade, before you throw it, after the pin has been taken out.
Given their recent history, the last thing Leeds want to do, as they look to clamber back into the Premier League, is navigate their way through the play-offs.
A few weeks ago, they looked all but assured of a top-two finish, but they have now fallen behind Sheffield United and are now level on points with third-placed Burnley, a team who boast the best goalkeeper in the division in James Trafford.
Leeds are wobbling and few would be confident of beating the likes of Sunderland, Coventry, West Brom or Middlesbrough in the play-offs. Not least when there is so little confidence in Meslier and the pressure will be at its most intense.
Make a mistake in the semi-finals, or even the final at Wembley, and his already brittle confidence would be shattered – possibly beyond repair, certainly in terms of his career at Leeds United.
The calls to drop Meslier have become louder as the season has progressed. The humiliation of watching the ball bounce past him in a 2-2 draw with Sunderland way back in October was a shocking mistake. Sadly, it was not the first or the last. What was once an aberration has become an alarming pattern.
Despite playing more matches across Europe than any other goalkeeper in the past five years, Meslier is regressing with both mental and technical flaws exposed.
There is, of course, much to be said for sticking with a goalkeeper going through a rough spell. Mistakes happen, and as everyone knows, when you blunder as a goalkeeper it is far more likely to lead to a goal than anywhere else on the pitch.
In turn, defenders like to know the traits and habits of the person behind them. Settled defensive units generally perform better than those that are constantly chopping and changing.
But the issue for Leeds is that Meslier is not going through a rough spell, he is having a terrible season. For a club chasing promotion, it is a huge concern.
Rather than reassure his defenders, Meslier is probably making Leeds more apprehensive because they cannot trust him to make saves or rely on his calm decision making.
There have been misgivings around Meslier for a while. The compilation of mistakes made in 2024, which has been widely shared on social media, makes for painful viewing.
Some of the mistakes, like the goal conceded against Hull, are unforgivable for a supposedly top-level goalkeeper who was being linked with a move to Chelsea when he first arrived in England.
It does not matter how many good saves he makes, when you concede so many soft goals, it makes them irrelevant in the eyes of supporters.
Farke, though, has been stubborn. The German has refused to listen to the outside noise, even though Meslier looks horrendously low on confidence – a player who no longer trusts himself or his instincts. That is a fatal flaw in a goalkeeper when there is rarely the time to second guess and split-second reactions are integral.
Last weekend, in the 2-2 home draw against Swansea, Meslier saved an early penalty – which should have provided a welcome confidence boost – but in the second half dropped a regulation catch from a corner and gifted the visitors a goal. The look of disgust on the faces of his team-mates said it all.
Then, in injury time, he was beaten again by a well-struck shot, but the angle should have favoured the goalkeeper and, not for the first time, the ball was close enough to him to save.
Farke is constantly being asked about Meslier’s form but has been unmoved. What makes it all the more strange is that he has a good back-up goalkeeper, Karl Darlow, who has played in the Premier League and helped Newcastle win promotion from the Championship, too.
Darlow may not have played a high volume of first-team games in recent years, but Leeds surely just need a vaguely safe pair of hands at the moment – and Meslier’s look like an accident waiting to happen.
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