Fulham 2-0 Leeds United: Unfinished
The logic is that variety is the spice of life, and what would be the point of an array of identical strikers? But Leeds would be really blessed if all their forward options had one thing in common: they could score lots of goals.
What do you say to a football team that can't score goals? Please? Javi Gracia plans to "analyse why today we didn't finish well," which will mean replaying clips of Leeds United players air-kicking loose balls two yards away from the goal line or aiming shots over the Thames to Putney, and "try to work on it in training sessions." That means between now and Saturday's return up the road to Chelsea Leeds players will gain the confidence that comes from bagging goal after goal in the Thorp Arch onion nets. Hopefully. If they move the goalies out the way. And make the posts bigger. And stand them on the goal line with the ball. And the coaches hold their little ankles with their hands as they pull their feet back and swing them forwards through the ball. 'That's how you do it! Yay!'
Finishing is one of football's mysteries. Marcelo Bielsa, whose creative Leeds teams were exceptional fluffers of chances, used to talk as if it was essentially untrainable: the strikers had to 'arrive in condition to score' and, after that, they either did or they didn't. Eddie Nketiah, a loanee from Arsenal with a tapping in knack, was kept on the bench because his play outside the box could impede the way chances were created for other players, who couldn't finish like him. Howard Wilkinson allowed himself some superpower over Lee Chapman, pointing out that the big striker's scoring rates went up when he played for Wilko at Sheffield Wednesday or Leeds, but that was about playing to Chappy's strengths, not helping him to score from six yards. Which, sometimes, Chapman did not, but Wilkinson would not criticise him. "If you score as many as he does, you're going to miss a few," he said, after one glaring miss. "Some players in this game never missed any, did they?"
Some players in Fulham vs Leeds United played as if they'd never scored any. They were the ones wearing the black shirts and orange shorts. Fulham, meanwhile, went through to the quarter-finals of the FA Cup by pinging two worldies past Illan Meslier and that was basically that. They say mistakes at this level will always get punished, but this was only the FA Cup and the gaps between crime and punishment were harsh on Leeds.
Midway through the first half, Tyler Adams put a square ball to Marc Roca nearer to João Palhinha, who seized it, sized things up, and curved the ball with painful beauty around Robin Koch and Meslier, into the top corner. Weirdos who get a weird kick out of weirdly criticising Meslier will moan about him being seven yards off his line, and if we want to go around picking faults, well, I just told you about Adams' pass. But Palhinha still had to have the quality to take advantage of the layout, and it doesn't seem fair that a midfield player at the Fulham Football Club should have so much.
Likewise, Manor Solomon, midway through the second half, used Aleksandar Mitrović for a wall pass through United's awkward right side of Rasmus Kristensen and Luke Ayling, then curved his shot around a diagonal line in off the far post. Meslier, in the right place, dived at full stretch. No.