Don Goodman slammed Leeds United goalkeeper Bailey Peacock-Farrell after his performance in Saturday’s 1-0 win against Sheffield United.
The Northern Ireland international kept a clean sheet in the Yorkshire derby but former striker Goodman highlighted Peacock-Farrell as a weak link and claimed Leeds could pay the price in the future.
“As we’ve seen [against Sheffield United], his judgement, time and again, is really not good,” Goodman told Sky Sports’ football channel. “He’s flapping at crosses, rushing off his line and missing the ball. It’s going to cost Leeds if he keeps doing that.”
OPINION
Peacock-Farrell goes from brilliant to awful and back again almost from one minute to the next while defending the Leeds goal. His shot-stopping can be superlative, as he showed with a couple of expert saves against Sheffield United on Saturday, but the problem for Bielsa as he plots the club’s return to the Premier League is that the 22-year-old is so far from the finished product. Peacock-Farrell is erratic and guilty of rushes to the blood, particularly when dealing with high balls and crosses into the Leeds box. Some of his judgement in the Yorkshire derby left an awful lot to be desired, although it was ironically a calamitous error from the Sheffield keeper Dean Henderson that settled a nail-bitingly close match. There is a clear sense that Peacock-Farrell is an ideal number two, who can learn the ropes for a more experienced and capable number one, who the Leeds top brass can expect to deliver the goods in the second half of the campaign. That January window looks the perfect opportunity to make the major change needed.