Former Leeds United defender Alex Bruce has commented on the pressure that is currently piling on Kiko Casilla to produce performances closer to his best as he looks to come out of a very shaky spell.
The Whites have recently managed to shake off a very poor spell in the Championship that saw them miraculously hold onto their spot in the automatic places with the sides below them not showing enough consistency to overtake them.
A run of two wins in 11 games saw the likes of Fulham and Nottingham Forest make serious headway in their pursuit of closing the gap to the top-two, and one prominent feature in that time was the alarming goalkeeping in that run.
Notable mishaps from Kiko Casilla included his failure to deal with crosses in a number of games, letting two simple shots down his near post into the goal and one tragic blunder away to Brentford where he let the ball slip under his foot and into the path of Said Benrahma.
He has potentially turned a corner with two home clean sheets against Bristol City and Reading but the jitters of those mistakes will still be fresh in the Spaniard’s mind going forward.
Speaking to Football Insider, former Whites defender Alex Bruce commented on how a player deals with the pressure and whether he believes the pressure is getting to the stopper. He stated: “It can do. If there’s ever going to be pressure on anybody at Leeds you would get found out because as I say it’s a huge expectation.
“It was a bad mistake the other night (against Brentford), wasn’t it? Terrible. It happens but the team dug him out of a hole.
“When you go to Elland Road on Saturday after making a terrible mistake the other night, you can’t afford to make any mistakes because they’ll be on you, that’s the way it is there.
“You can either handle that, sink or swim, but if he’s got any aspirations of playing for the likes of Real Madrid, you’re just going to have to handle it.”
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The Verdict
Bruce has first-hand experience of playing under the pressure and expectation that comes with signing for Leeds.
Casilla has played with the very best that the game has to offer and won some of the biggest prizes in football but there is a different pressure when signing for a club that has so much expectation on each player.
The Spaniard has found this out the hard way in recent months but has stuck with it and put together two accomplished performances following his howler at Griffin Park.
Casilla has 12 more games this season to prove the doubters wrong and right the wrongs of last season to get this Leeds side where they want to be, and is on course to doing so with these assured performances in recent games.