Former Leeds United defender Pontus Jansson has sent a humorous message to Luke Ayling after his dominant centre-back performance against Burnley.
Leeds United faced Sean Dyche’s Burnley at Elland Road on Sunday afternoon looking for a reaction after a 6-2 demolition at Old Trafford last weekend.
While the Clarets had started the season off slowly, they had been hitting form and posed a significant threat to Leeds in one of our key areas of weakness, set pieces.
Not only were we struggling in general to deal with balls in the air, we had no fit senior centre-backs for the clash.
Luke Ayling started alongside Pascal Struijk in what ended up being a back three as Kalvin Phillips dropped in to cope with Burnley’s two-man strike force of Chris Wood and Ashley Barnes.
We all knew exactly how the visitors were going to play and lo and behold, we had to deal with constant crosses and long balls into the box.
However, Ayling came out on top in a huge performance that saw Leeds keep their fifth clean sheet of the season.
Nullifying former teammate, Chris Wood, Ayling was one of Leeds’ best players on the day and took to Instagram to share his enjoyment following the game:
Amongst fans and teammates commenting was former fan-favourite Pontus Jansson, who had this humorous praise for Ayling’s makeshift outing at centre-back:
Ayling was absolutely sensational yesterday and deserves all the praise he gets for how he has taken to the Premier League.
Slotting in at centre-back is never going to be easy, especially against a side eager to use their height to their advantage.
You can see why Marcelo Bielsa is eager to keep his defensive depth as it is as we head into January, considering how Ayling has done at centre-back on more than one occasion.
Five clean sheets on the board and there aren’t many who have been better for us this season than Ayling.