Coventry City 0-2 Leeds United: Here's your chance(s)
Leeds United either did or didn't get what they wanted from the transfer window, and your perspective might have influenced how unhinged you felt as kick-off approached in Coventry. Personally I felt like I was going insane.
One of the ironic outcomes of 2018's 'spygate' drama about what I've long preferred to call Marcelo Bielsa's 'illicit scouting' of Derby — is Frank Lampard Junior's belief that he, no but seriously, is the one acting undercover. He thinks we can't see him. Or through him. "I don't want to talk about that," he huffed, 'that' being a '4-2' gesture he made to Leeds fans after this game that referred to his Derby beating Bielsa's Leeds, and he seemed affronted that anyone had even mentioned it. This has been his style for a long time, a perpetually miffed amazement that the plebs in the press and in the stands might ask him a question about things he's done and expect him to answer it. I'm starting to think its not haughtiness, but surprise. Frank, despite the floodlights lighting up his head in front of thousands of people, really thinks we can't see him, that he can just do what he wants and not be challenged on it because he thinks his England caps are an invisibility cloak around all the bad stuff. He'll have been as surprised as the Leeds employee, being hauled out of the bushes with binoculars in hand, when he was asked about his attitude to the away end. Why was anyone looking at that? Why is anyone asking about that? Forget you saw it. Remember the England caps. Just move on. He doesn't want to talk about that and, as he's always been told, what Frank wants Frank gets.
Leeds United either did or didn't get what they wanted from the transfer window that closed this week, and your perspective on that question might have influenced how unhinged you felt as kick-off approached in Coventry. Personally I felt like I was going insane from trying to parse circular arguments I was hearing about how Leeds should have signed someone or anyone to 'guarantee' promotion as if such a guarantee is even possible, even though the squad Leeds have is better than any other in the Championship and likely to be promoted anyway; how Leeds should have 'got deals done' for players who didn't want to come, from clubs who didn't want them to leave, like kidnappers; that the better post-Orta standards for transfers should have gone in the bin and Leeds should have gone full Sheffield United, buying off the peg of an algorithm and hoping it's not Ian Poveda. That Leeds, regardless of sense, should have played January like a game of Football Manager, hammering the mouse buttons until the game does what you want, just to make you feel better. Personally, I don't think you can ask for much more from a transfer window than to end it with the best squad in the division. Not adding to the squad this January is a risk, and adding it to it would have been a risk, because everything is a risk: it's football. Now, we watch the games and see how the chosen risks play out. That's sort of the point of the whole enterprise, unless you appoint Mother Shipton as your sporting director.
Back to Coventry, then, where of course if Leeds had bought a better no.10 and some sharper strikers last week the final score would have been — going off shots — about 19-0. Emi Buendia, or else some randomer-off-a-spreadsheet, abandoned Leeds to enduring Brenden Aaronson and making do with 2-0. Personally I'm fine with that because I sort of enjoy Brenden's silliness, but I can see the arguments. If only Aaronson would calm down a bit, take a Pabloesque puff of the cheeks and think! "Sometimes he zooms around like a like a bee anyhow," Daniel Farke said about Aaronson this week, "you have to make sure that the energy doesn't come out of both of his ears, in order that he's not too hectic." If only Farke would make Aaronson calm down a bit! That is the line holding Brenden back, and it's relevant, because a calmed down Aaronson quiets talk of a new no.10 and puts about £30m of potential transfer outlay on a replacement back in the kitty. Aaronson has been an interesting case this season because for all his talk about putting wrongs right he's only really here because Profit & Sustainability rules make him too expensive to sell. The real reason Leeds don't have a creative no.10 is not reluctance in the last four weeks, it's because Victor Orta was dreaming of this bozo playing for Jesse Marsch back in 2021. Marsch has long since been and gone but Aaronson is still here, existing, and he's interesting. I must be the inverse Fabrizio Romano because I'm more into giving him a few breathing exercises to make him play better than I am about spending millions on an upgrade. 'The nobility of the resources used' is what Marcelo Bielsa calls this, and to win promotion and then say, wow, look how we even had this doofus screwing up chances for us all season and we still beat Coventry and the rest out of sight — that, that's noble alright.
Which brings us to goalkeepers, and Coventry's Oliver Dovin in particular. He was signed from Hammarby as their new number one in the summer, then dropped in November as, in his words, "We conceded a lot of goals that were rubbish, and in games where teams hadn’t had much of the ball or chances and they still managed to score." Lampard has put him back in the team but I guess, after this game, Frank won't want to talk about that. Leeds took the lead after quarter of an hour when Dovin's chipped clearance bounced off Ellis Simms in the centre circle and he booted the ball backwards towards Manor Solomon. Solomon, looking around from the centre of the Sky Blue half, decided on a touch that would cushion the ball and put it into Joel Piroe's feet. You can write the rest by saying simply that 'Piroe scored' because he only introduced doubts about that with his second half finishing. Here, his run broke the wonky offside line, his control on Solomon's pass was superb, and he had all the time Aaronson needs to learn about to pick his spot in the bottom corner. And the thing about Dovin was that five minutes later he almost set Leeds up for 2-0 by doing the same thing again — a careful chip to the centre circle that Ethan Ampadu won easily, Ilia Gruev passing to Solomon, his ball through to Piroe just too close to the goalie. This was not clever stuff from the Coventry keeper.
Neither was his part in actually making it 2-0, but at least it was funny. Even Jayden Bogle, who regularly makes these charges from right-back, can't be imagining they'll actually end with him scoring. Just get the ball up the pitch and send the blue shirts running, making something happen for the forwards. Well, Bogle kept running, and kept running, and the forwards ran aside taking defenders with them, until one blue shirt stepped over and Bogle had to beat him with a heavy nutmeg under his blue shorts. That sent the ball to Dovin, who dove on it and dropped it back at Bogle's feet. Surprised, Bogle still thought his next steps through, side-stepping until he could prod the ball in the net even while he must have been mentally celebrating scoring.
All the other goal celebrations were imaginary as Leeds made and wasted chance after chance, and before the chances they wasted chance after chance to make a chance. You can't complain about a team looking like it'll score every time it gets the ball but you can start to worry a bit when they don't score from any of the times they got the ball. Perhaps beating Cardiff 7-0 made us greedy, and there were times when Leeds looked unsure about how to proceed in Coventry. They wanted more goals, definitely, but the longer they went without them the better the 2-0 scoreline looked. There were tempting times for Leeds to slow the game down and take the points, but there were even more tempting routes to Coventry's goal. And there was a question of doing the right thing, because not scoring a third began to feel obscene. They thought they'd got one in stoppage time, Largie Ramazani getting to the byline, cutting back to Junior Firpo, his shot going over the line in the close company of Wilf Gnonto. These celebrations were real enough and long-winded enough for the ghost of Franz Beckenbauer to descend from Paris in 1975 and whisper, in the referee's ear, 'rule it out for offside and worry about the rest later'. That's what the ref, who had already put a clear foul on Aaronson in the penalty area clear out of his mind, decided to do.
That is was still only 2-0 at the end was his fault, and the Leeds forwards' fault. For all the talk of strikers, Dan James' was the worst statistical culprit, with five shots and only one on target, although he'll reply to those numbers with clips of how the passes setting him up went all around him. Piroe, after scoring a certain chance, started missing them. In the credit column, though, we have Illan Meslier, at long last. If you prefer your football with a side of finger-pointing, how were Coventry allowed a free header in the area just before the hour, setting up a second free header for their dangerman Simms on the edge of the six yard box? If you prefer footie with a dose of astonishment, though, revel as we wonder: how did Meslier react so quickly, get down so far, and with an arm so strong he didn't just stop the header on the white of the line but pushed it beyond the post to safety? There are no question marks here, just one of the best saves you'll see. Meslier was needed again in the 89th minute, Bobby Thomas heading a corner at the bar that Meslier had to be quick and strong to add his glove to. (At this point Farke brought on Pascal Struijk and Josuha Guilavogui to put a stop to headers.)
This was the old Meslier again, the match-winner at Anfield, the confident save-n-wink kid of the Premier League, the 'masterclass' Meslier who stopped Sheffield United, and the last minute last line who kept Leicester out last season. Is it okay to say someone who is 25 in a month was 'rolling back the years'? Not really. But he was chucking attacking throws down the line to set Dan James running as if he was a debutant away to Arsenal again. Meslier was deemed replaceable as the transfer window was opening but I'm not sure any other Championship goalie keeps Leeds in the game at Coventry. Like Aaronson — and even Dan James in his new post-Fulham chance-missing pomp — there's a line between success and failure being worked out in real time before us that, if you let it, will take you right to the heart of the joy of watching this sport. Meslier looked happy about it, anyway.
And Frank Lampard looked miserable. Also a joy. He had Coventry winning four in a row with their 3-5-2 before Leeds came to town, and while he couldn't think of a way to stop Leeds from running behind his high full-backs and making chances all night, he could remember the score from five-and-a-half years ago when Derby County triumphed and his dignity failed him. Among my vivid memories of that play-off is the end, when Marcelo Bielsa was waiting patiently for Lampard to come and shake his hand, while Lampard was too busy tearing around the pitch giving it big 'uns in his suit like your mate's brother-in-law gone off his head on the free bar at York Races. He probably don't wanna talk about that though because, deep down, he remembers how it ends. ⭑彡