Everton 1-0 Leeds United: The hope we had

The world moves at such a dizzying pace that it's hard for one humble brain to comprehend how a football club goes to Goodison Park one year, with Marcelo Bielsa in charge, then again one year later, with Michael Skubala trying to help. One year and six days feels like one lifetime and six chops to the solar plexus. How did Leeds United get from that, and all it was, to this, and all it isn't?

Leeds United lost both times, that much didn't change. But last February Leeds had Bielsa both to blame for results and to take responsibility for them. This time, not much blame can be placed with Skubala, and while nobody is asking him to take more responsibility than he has, nobody is volunteering to take any away from him, either. The sucker-punches are deflecting into his midriff, for being daft enough to step up to a job nobody else will touch.

The scoreline last year was bigger, the Leeds team this year (in theory) is better. Last year Everton played well, this year they looked awful. They still won. If Illan Meslier had been closer to his line this time, Seamus Coleman may never have thought to hit a cross-shot behind him, a wondrous moon-shot that settled the game, without which Everton looked no more likely to score than Leeds. But Illan was not closer so Seamus was inspired, and the home fans who arrived with banners demanding a good old sacking of a bad old board went home happy, while Leeds fans who had arrived looking for hope fanned the streets around Goodison, in case any of the yellow and blue placards can be reused.

The margin in the result was smaller than last season but the effect was much more like hell because when Leeds United sacked Bielsa they booted optimism away with him. For as long as Marcelo Bielsa was the manager of Leeds United Football Club there was always a reason to believe in impossible things, because that had made no sense to begin with but it happened anyway and was glorious. Those murals around Leeds feel religious, convincing us to believe that something so absurd actually happened. Marcelo Bielsa shopping in Wetherby Morrisons as if placed there by some archangel was not a figment of epidemic fever. A football club was resurrected here.

For as long as Bielsa was responsible for Leeds United there was a reason to hope the next game might be better, that he might find answers to problems, that the last big defeat really might be the last one, because who else could you trust to know more about Leeds and football than the one person who had made those two things bearable together?

That hope might have been delusion. But this whole stupid fucking game is absolutely fucking nothing without delusion and hope, as we're discovering now Leeds United no longer have them. Maybe believing in Bielsa was delusion. But reality means believing in Andrea Radrizzani, Victor Orta and Angus Kinnear. I wish I still had a choice.

There is obviously no rational basis left for believing in the board now, but equally, so what? They're not footballers. They're not who I go to see at the football game. They're not exciting or fun or good at kicking a ball. Saturday was not specifically their fault, in the sense that every day is their fault, but Saturday was an experiment in the one interesting thing Leeds have to offer right now: operating as a club without management. The managers can't find a manager, while the caretaker manager is sticking admirably to his match-by-match remit. This could, in theory, be a beautiful opportunity to give the game back to the people who are often buried beneath the media attention given to managerial sack races and boardroom dramas: the footballers. At Goodison Park, Leeds United's footballers fluffed it badly.

Perhaps the whole game really is contained in Sean Dyche's freckled cranium. Maybe just his presence on a touchline, not alone but with his long-serving troupe of Ian Woan and Steve Stone sounding like a misremembered slow jam, is enough to spellbind a match his way. But I didn't think so on Saturday because Everton also looked very bad at playing. In the early stages, when the home crowd still had its pre-match protests in mind, Everton looked ready to crumble from a few mild pushes from Leeds. Leeds, though, as if fearing the edifice would fall back on them, stopped shoving. At least, they did until just before half-time, when Tyler Adams shoved Dwight McNeil into the advertising hoardings and Weston McKennie rushed across to push his way into a double booking for Leeds' midfield. In between times, Everton's midfield of Amadou Onana, Abdoulaye Doucouré and Idrissa Gueye had discovered that if they stood up Adams and McKennie couldn't tackle them, and if they lost the ball to either they could easily get it back. Whenever Neal Maupay dropped deep to lay off a pass from his defenders, the middle of the pitch belonged to the Blues. Leeds needed Adams and McKennie to assert themselves in the centre of the pitch to win. They did not.