Hull City 3-3 Leeds United: Somewhere, over the bar
Illan Meslier could have just left it all alone and let things take a quieter course. Goalkeeper? More like, let in a goal to keeper things interesting... er.
Leeds United's problem this week was throwing two wins away, or rather, throwing them back into play, and keeping the Championship title/promotion/play-off race (pick your pessimism) closer than it otherwise would be. Illan Meslier's mistake for Hull City's second goal kept the ball in play, kept the Tigers in the match and, after their equaliser, kept Burnley and Sheffield United in close promotion contention. He could have just left it all alone and let things take a quieter course. Goalkeeper? More like, let in a goal to keeper things interesting... er.
Leeds United's team performance in Hull was full of misjudgements, errors and stupidity. The forwards were also culpable for keeping the score too close, because they couldn't score from close in. No matter how many times the ball was cut back through Hull's six yard box in search of tap-ins, it was finding only flicks that fluffed the ball too faintly to interfere with its course. Then was the whole Max Wöber factor, because while we can't blame him for everything in United's worst performances this season, we can point out that he has been rarely sighted unless — Middlesbrough in the Carabao Cup, Hull this weekend — bad performances are too. Then there's the manager, and Daniel Farke seemed guilty of allowing trust to tip over into complacency, with only-Harrogate next weekend and the end of our festive fixtures. He said before Christmas that he was concentrating on this run of games, that only after January 4th he would step back and take stock. And, perhaps significantly, think about transfers. So for once he didn't freshen things on seventy minutes in Hull, presumably because all the resting will be done over the next two weeks. He didn't tighten things up to see the game out, either, although he did take Wöber off so perhaps I can't complain about that too much. What can I complain about? Oh, hello Illan. Well, let's come back to you.
The entire disjointed look of Leeds seemed to have its source in Pascal Struijk's sore hamstring. He made it to Hull but not onto the bench, and United's defence fell into disarray without him. As a left-back Wöber plays too much like a left wing-back, a job of work he interprets like a centre-forward, meaning huge open spaces behind him that he doesn't have the pace to cover. Hence Hull's opening goal, a through ball into an empty half leaving Meslier a choice between staying in his net and and being shot past or coming out and being lobbed over; he chose the latter, which does at least look cooler. Another contributor to these gaps was Ethan Ampadu, who had me worried as a defensive midfielder at the start of the season the way he was charging recklessly about, and was bringing the same energy to partnering — well, abandoning — Joe Rodon. All this reminded me that at Harrogate Town, in pre-season, Farke put Leeds into a 3-4-2-1 that allowed Ampadu to do some Kalvin Phillips type things, and might have suited the players available in Hull by keeping Wöber as a centre-back and letting Dan James and, if not Manor Solomon, Largie Ramazani be attack-minded wing-backs. After doing it once in Harrogate, though, Farke hasn't started with three at the back since.
It shouldn't have mattered because even if Leeds couldn't get a grip on their overall performance they did at least get a grip of the match. After the game we could have been stroking our chins and agreeing about how the mark of champions is to win easily without playing well. Instead we watched Leeds score three times away from home and still not win, which is the mark of idiots. Ao Tanaka made the second half's start a joy, with the sort of making space and hitting it strike from outside the area we've been begging our midfielders for. He put his shot thoroughly in the top corner, just to make it perfect. Then Dan James finally finished off one of those cut-backs, although even then it was after Joel Piroe hadn't connected with the first one at the front post, needing Jayden Bogle to cut it back again for James to score. He looked simultaneously very, very happy and very very angry about that, as if he was burying his last couple of lacklustre games here in his hometown. Then Piroe scored a harder chance, set up by a pass from Hull's goalie; convention dictated an early shot but instead Piroe advanced with the ball, letting the keeper get back into his net, beating a player then shooting so accurately that instead of trying to save it Ivor Pandur was putting up an apologetic hand before the ball even hit his net.
Even at 3-1, though, Leeds couldn't calm the game down. Before talking about what Meslier did, it's worth wondering what his ten teammates were doing, allowing Hull to have 75 per cent of the ball in the ten minutes between 3-1 and 3-2, why Joe Rothwell didn't complete a single pass in that time, why Aaronson and James only touched the ball once each, why Piroe's only pass, after scoring, was the restart at 3-2. Farke seemed to be the only one who didn't think Josuha Guilavogui's influence could have diffused the jitters, if not before Meslier let Hull back into it, then at least before the defence repeated the end of the Blackburn game by letting a corner get complicated and letting Abu Kamara smash an equaliser in. I wouldn't blame Meslier for that one — it was headed away by Sam Byram at the front post as he came for it, so we'd have to get into long group psychologies of trust to know whether Byram was ignoring his goalie or over-protecting him or what. And, no matter how big Meslier's mistake was for Hull's second, Leeds still led by a goal after he'd done it and should have been able to see out the win. Dan James had a gift of a chance to make it 4-2 but picked the only way not to score, bobbing his lob off the goalies bonce. If that had gone in, we could be looking back on Meslier's muck-up and laughing, which is the point of a team sport: individuals make mistakes, the team makes sure it doesn't matter.
Instead Meslier's mistake did matter and the only people laughing about it are everybody, except Leeds people. Hull scored their second goal when, from a set-piece, a header was sending the ball over the bar until Meslier reached up and palmed it down into his six yard box, where João Pedro pounced. I dunno what Meslier was thinking here, except that when you've got long arms you might as well use them for something. Anything but this, though. Touching the ball was a bad idea, but at least touching it even further over would only have given away a daft corner. Tapping it down, forwards, as you're going backwards, with a penalty area full of Tigers? Come on, man.
Things might be easier if Meslier's brilliance was imaginary, but he was brilliant before, for a while. He used to make fantastic saves in the Premier League and I would go to matches excited about seeing him do something great the way people buy tickets to see dazzling wingers or goalscorers. That stuff is in him, somewhere, and there isn't much of him to hide it. Meslier could sort himself out and become that amazing guy again, and the risk is that he'll do it for another club and we'll regret it. But then, he might not. Take Kepa Arrizabalaga, and his £70m transfer to Chelsea, then aged 24 as Meslier is now. By the end of his second season his save percentage was down to 54 per cent and he'd let in eleven more goals than the expected stats said he should — and, beyond stats, he kept fucking up to a very high level. This season he went on loan to Bournemouth and the first thing he did was fuck something up. Kepa is now 30. Sure, goalkeepers can play until they're 40, but Kepa will have to if he's to make up for the last six years. If Meslier plays until he's 40, the year will be 2041.
The short term script is easier to write. Karl Darlow will play in goal against Harrogate Town in the FA Cup. He will be responsible for both goals in their 2-1 win. There will be clamour to buy a new goalie before the end of the January window but Leeds will stick with Meslier. Then they'll win the league. Then we'll spend the summer wondering whether Daniel Farke will give into what Don Revie eventually admitted to himself, that he'd been faithful for too long through all Gary Sprake's mistakes when he could have the safe hands of David Harvey instead.
Meanwhile, you can get a long way in the Championship by being good enough, and it's a quirk of league football that the size of the mistake doesn't really matter because it can only cost a finite number of points. In this case, two. Leeds still took one. They've used the festive fixtures to move from three points behind 1st place to one point above 2nd. It's obvious to spank Meslier for Leeds not being five points clear but he's not singularly to blame for the team not defending two last-minute equalising corners in a week, and I hope some of the next fortnight at Thorp Arch is spent on learning how to clear second balls from the penalty area. It should also bring Junior Firpo closer to fitness, who was key going forward and back before he was injured; ease Struijk's hamstrings; and restore Ampadu's post-injury strength to midfield where, away from home, it's vital. Getting those things together should mean our goalie can do whatever mad nonsense he wants when we're two goals up. ⭑彡