Against Stoke, Leeds U21s brought football back

As I stumble into October, trying to remember what football was and what we used to do, bless the Leeds United Under-21s for their brazen reminder that the game at its best can be about young lads messing about having fun. Cruelly expending some other young lads, true, but they only play for Stoke.

As the curtain raisers for this season's short second act, Leeds' kids played with an anxiety to please that was denied them at Elland Road back in the other epoch. Their name was on the board of the last thing we saw that looked like football, but that eleven was given over to personalities like Pat Bamford, Luke Ayling, Liam Cooper. Then came the Academy Dreams approved-reality show, lavishing attention on a bunch who have moved on from the U21s — Joe Gelhardt, Sam Greenwood, Charlie Cresswell, Nohan Kenneh — and one or two others who now have to give reasons why they're still hanging around for another series, if anyone's making one.

The night's players had a lot of reasons to impress, and the most heartfelt attempt was Sean McGurk's, who seems to have looked at his role in Academy Dreams like a mirror and cut his shoulder length copper hair. I think this is a mistake — sure, he was looking a lot like Feargal Sharkey in his 1980s post-Undertones pre-environmental campaigner 'Good Heart' crooner phase, but he looked good, and looked distinctive. Now, with a short back and sides and a floppy fringe, the floodlights at York muting his ginger mop, he looks like Charlie Allen.

Allen in the first half stole McGurk's thunder from the other wing, combining with Cody Drameh to torture Stoke. After a cautious i.e. boring opening ten minutes, Leeds realised they had an advantage against the left-back and goalkeeper and started making the most of it, like a gang of meanies. It started with a backheel from Mateo Joseph that nearly brought a goal, as Harvey Sutcliffe's cross was headed across goal by Allen, where Joseph couldn't dive on it. The move redrew the line of what Leeds thought they could do, and if the stats guys forgot for a while about measuring throw-in types and the sixth pass from nothing, and started counting backheels and nutmegs instead, the kids would have been breaking records.

United's play didn't quite cleave but the goalie, Tommy Simkin, a seventeen-year-old 'former British karate champion' according to Stoke's website, was there to help. Darko Gyabi insisted on a couple of forward passes from midfield, the second going wide right to Drameh. He crossed low to the front post, directly to the grasp of the crouching keeper, but he chopped at that greasy Nike Flight like a pile of bricks on a plank while Joseph was following fashion as well as the ball so he could pounce. It's the in thing now, since Erling Haaland came to town, that number nines are looking hungrier already, trying to replicate his desire for sticking the ball in from two yards like it's the 1980s again.