Fulham 2-1 Leeds United: Mistaken
The people to blame can fire someone then hire someone else then move blithely on, in the background when they choose to be, or the foreground when they choose to be, until they sell and take the profit and leave.
Anything Leeds United do now will be too late but the wacky thing is it might not matter. Leeds were a little less feeble against Fulham than against Crystal Palace and Liverpool, still lost, and still stayed out of the Premier League relegation places. Javi Gracia doesn’t have to fix everything and shouldn’t be expected to. He might not be able to fix anything, and shouldn’t be expected to. He just has to get this team to the finishing line above the relegation line. It looks impossible from here, with six games left and no hope of a win, but remember last season’s last six: a draw, three defeats, a draw, then a win at Brentford. It was ludicrous but somehow it was enough.
At the end of it all, up or down, Gracia should hand the club back to the people who made this mess, or the people spending hundreds of millions to take over this mess, and go get a normal job at a sensible club. What will be will be at Leeds and I don’t see why Javi, gracious enough to come here and do his best, should spend a minute more worrying about it than he has to. He’s carrying a haunted expression now, rubbing his face on the sidelines, telling the press that he is “worried about everything”. He’s been trying to restore some sanity to Leeds, to control the chaos, make them harder to beat. But good sense has been absent from Leeds so long the club now acts as if it never knew it, doesn’t want it, wouldn’t know what to do with it if it came. Last season Jesse Marsch attacked the threat of relegation with Joe Gelhardt upfront, Sam Greenwood in midfield, Raphinha at wing-back taking long throws. Perhaps instead of trying to calm things down, Gracia needs to romp through the next six games doing the maddest things he can think of. Mateo Joseph, Archie Gray and Wilf Gnonto in defence?
At Craven Cottage Leeds were basically the same again as their recent games with mild tweaks that didn’t help much. Liam Cooper and Max Wöber returned to the defence and did enough good stuff to suggest dogged commitment might be the way forward. Their brave tackling and last-ditch blocks stopped Fulham in situations Palace and Liverpool danced through. One delirious tackle by Cooper, just inside the penalty area, was risky but carried out as soundly as could be, his tackling leg low, all his aim on the ball. Wöber, from left-back, hunted confrontation. It meant Leeds, by half-time, were still in a dour match.
In the second half Leeds were undone from further forward. Rodrigo was leading the line, with Jackie Harrison and a lively looking Crysencio Summerville either side and Brenden Aaronson behind. The bench promised Pat Bamford, Georginio Rutter, Wilf Gnonto and Luis Sinisterra to reinforce them. But there was no point and nothing they could do up there if not given the ball. In midfield, Weston McKennie achieved twelve of his twenty attempted passes, four of the completed ones nominally going forward. Marc Roca was a little more successful, accurate with 34 of 43 tries, a bunch of them reaching the wings, but that ends up highlighting the paucity of McKennie’s contribution alongside him. You might think, well, perhaps McKennie was deployed more defensively. But if he was, where was he for Fulham’s goals? For the first, he was caught upfield as Fulham took advantage of the space in front of the defence to isolate its weak point, Rasmus Kristensen at right-back, and jogged back with no thought of picking up Harry Wilson, who was at the back post to finish when Illan Meslier flapped the cross to him. For the second, he failed to control a bouncing ball in Fulham’s half and they did the same again, through the space to the left-wing, through Meslier’s confidence to a goal.