Leeds United 1-0 Harrogate Town: Only clues to take you through
This was a match when fans were looking for answers, forgetting that football is essentially unsolvable and that should be why we love it. Never mind love! give us final judgements.
It was magic of the FA Cup time again this weekend, for mystery and wonder about, mainly, when and how it will all be over. These days it's hard not to react to FA Cup magic like an audience member being dragged on stage by a conjurer. Once, people might marvel at being so close to impossible illusions. Now, with every high-def phone camera in the room trained on them, anxious for content, we're concentrated on our own silent prayer: please don't embarrass me, please don't embarrass me, please don't embarrass me.
In the end Leeds United got through their third round tie against Harrogate Town without much credit but they avoided shame, as most of the higher ranked teams did. Even Spurs, although they needed the help of new rules about extra-time instead of replays.
In some sense the Leeds match wasn't complete until Sunday evening and the draw for the fourth round, when we found out that the reward for beating Harrogate 1-0 is playing whichever car factory works team, Millwall or Dagenham & Redbridge, wants it more when they meet on Monday night. What a treat, what a good job Leeds got through to another game with all the worst implications of the third round match. The FA Cup is essentially a competition in which half the teams in every round are trying desperately not to shame themselves, until such time as they get a draw when the potential embarrassment weighs heavier on their opponents. Good times.
It's all quite dissatisfying and so was the game against Harrogate, which had to meet impossible standards if it was to satisfy expectations. It was a match when fans were looking for answers, forgetting that football is essentially unsolvable and that should be why we love it. Never mind love! Give us final judgements: would Karl Darlow do enough to prove he should be Leeds United's number one goalkeeper? Would Isaac Schmidt usurp Bogle, Firpo, Byram and Wöber in one ninety minute show? Would Leeds without Brenden Aaronson discover new levels of attacking creativity? Would Daniel Farke let some Under-21 stars explore their potential against adult opponents?
The answer, on all points, was no, no matter how much we might like to convince ourselves there were a few yeses along the way. Part of the problem was the game plan that Harrogate brought to Elland Road, quite naturally, from the bottom of League Two. They sat deep and defended their arses off, and that distorted the game so much it became useless as an experiment we could learn from. Leeds looked comfortable enough from early on that there was hardly a hint of the jeopardy that could be felt in previous years when losing to Crawley, Sutton or Rochdale, or when we won at Old Trafford in 2010. There was never a sense that the result was up for grabs, even when a succession of daftness — Joe Rodon, why run the ball out of play in your own corner, why? — gave Harrogate a flurry of long-throws and corner kicks. We settled in from the start for a normal bout of attack versus defence in which Leeds could only lose if they lost, our usual Championship fare turned up to a greater dimension by the two division gap.
Is Isaac Schmidt a good full-back? Yeah, probably, but there was so little need for him to do any full-backing that we didn't find much out about it in this match. Perhaps his biggest credit was, given how little he was needed at the back, how disciplined he was sticking to it, not just wandering off to play wherever. There were little signs here and there, some good in his link-up play, some bad like being too easily knocked off the ball, but nothing to draw any conclusions from. Schmidt is, for some reason, a player fans want big conclusions about, despite there being very little mystery about his presence: signed as a back-up player, he has been used as a back-up player, and against Harrogate, he wasn't tested enough to prove he should be more than a back-up player. Sometimes it's fine to let a cheap reserve be just that.
The clamour around Darlow is more pressing because the freaking out around Illan Meslier has become so depressing. Meslier can't carry on like this and neither can we, and if Darlow can't save the situation — or maybe just some shots — it'll be time to scream and scream about the transfer window until February. Whoever is in goal for Leeds, then, is playing a game of countdown in which everyone is waiting to scream about their first mistake, and Darlow obliged on in the middle of the second half by booting a pass straight to one of Harrogate's attackers. He also seemed a little too willing to continue United's regular tactic of letting corners bounce in the six yard box, until nearer the end of the game when he came and caught a few. There was also a run out of goal to bravely stop a player rushing through on goal, a moment that probably sealed his place over Meslier for the next game in the minds of most fans; and a couple of fairly normal looking saves, which might have been enough on their own. Otherwise he suffered from the same style hindering judgements of Meslier, because the way United dominate games means little for the goalie to do except moving possession on from defender to defender. This state of affairs could continue through the rest of January whoever is in goal, as it's quite possible whoever is picked will not have enough activities to prove themselves Martynique or Rachubkesque once and for all. It could conceivably continue that way until the end of the season, weeks without a save. It might actually not be a massive deal who is in goal, as long as Leeds keep scoring as many goals as they're capable of.
About which: although Manor Solomon played very well, neither he, Wilf Gnonto or Largie Ramazani, roaming around behind Mateo Joseph, could find the formula for passing through Town's back ten. Eventually plaudits go to the goalmakers, Solomon for going around the outside of a defender and crossing, Ramazani for getting himself unmarked in the six yard box and scoring with a header. Three Harrogate defenders all turned to their teammate Levi Sutton and yelled at him together for letting Ramazani go, like the three wise men yelling at Meslier in Hull last week, and the way Sutton put his head in his hands told an old story of football that gets forgotten sometimes when we're berating Leeds for their lack of creativity: in most goals you'll find a defender's mistake.
Mateo Joseph might benefit from remembering that. He was the player I took the clearest view of in this game, a striker who is feeling the need not just of one goal but a bunch of them to make him feel alright. Surely, you might think, against a team from the bottom of League Two — but no. But it was not for want of trying. He might actually have been blunted by his excess of trying, as Joseph was trying to turn any slight situation into a goal, sometimes to the detriment of his own chance to score and sometimes to the detriment of the team. Other times he just didn't seem to be understanding the chances coming his way at places like the near post and the six yard box, which perhaps only means a lack of experience — he needs to see more of those opportunities, in first class football, to learn how to take them. His poaching for Spain's Under-21s suggests he doesn't lack what strikers shrug and call the knack. Joseph's conundrum is that he seems to find it easier to take the ball thirty yards from goal, run past defenders, and shoot — one of that kind hit the post here, another went close — but he can't get onto easier chances that others have made for him the way Joel Piroe can. Piroe, one would hope, could be teaching him, but Piroe seems like the kind of player who can't teach finishing because he doesn't know how he got so good in the first place.
All else I gleaned from this game was about Josuha Guilavogui and how it's a good job Ethan Ampadu is fit again. Guilavogui blundered around at centre-back, almost giving away a penalty (on another day, with VAR etc etc) and almost getting into a fight with Town's big problem centre-forward, Josh March, who did play well but shouldn't have been bothering a player with seven caps for France. Unless that player is one that clubs were passing on through summer and is here for squad cover and good vibes. We might get some different views of him, and Schmidt and Joseph and whoever the second choice goalie is by then, in the fourth round in February. But the transfer window will have closed by then, and the aim of promotion from the Championship means a different kind of screaming whether the result is a shame or not. ⭑彡