Leeds United 1-1 Leicester City: Good at bad

There’s something still there, some hardly functioning remnant of what Leeds United used to be when they were working so hard to get into this position that is slipping away from them now. It’s like a faint red spot on a heat monitor, or a vibration under concrete from a twitching leg, trying to kick the debris away. Is it enough? When you’ve put so much effort into getting here, and surviving, when do you know enough’s enough and give up?

It was fair to assume that would happen when Max Wöber didn’t make the squad, but this isn’t about him. The best of this match was Jackie Harrison matching skill with workrate against the team that must have marvelled at his half-finished medical in January. It was Liam Cooper blocking shots in the box that were flying past Illan Meslier a few weeks ago, and Luke Ayling giving his goalie a big double thumbs up across half the pitch, thanking his desolate keeper for an excellent pass to the wing. It was even, to complete the ghosts of our recent past, Pat Bamford spurning the chance to make himself the matchwinning hero at the very end, when with the goal at his mercy, he once again put himself at the mercy of the Kop.

This was part of the secret to United’s promotion, and it’s about more than just graft. That these players, and their former teammates, achieved what they did was absurd. We used to mock Gjanni Alioski as a hapless right-winger, but somehow we still yearn for him as a Premier League left-back. Nobody foresaw Gaetano Berardi’s journey from walking red card to totem of promotion. Mateusz Klich was trying to put right the wrongs of Wolfsburg. Ayling was the reject from Bristol City, Cooper the reject from Leeds, when Kyle Bartley was around, anyway. Compare Harrison, stuck on the bench at Middlesbrough, to Harrison, playing left-back and left-wing simultaneously for Leeds. Bamford was one of the lost loan souls of Chelsea, looking for a home.

It’s not that these players suddenly got good, and it’s only partly to do with their coach. It’s down to their shared understanding of how you can perform to your best by becoming intimate with your faults. Luke Ayling knows how it feels not to be good at something, because growing up with a stammer meant he was never good at talking. But he learned what to do about it, to make sure it has never held him back. Harrison is a dedicated student of his own game, and knows when his delivery is off point. You can hear his anguish on the effects microphones, then you can see him trying again. You don’t need to tell Liam Cooper he’s got a mistake in him, because he knows, and every game he plays at this level is about not making that mistake. When he failed with a tackle to stop Kelechi Iheanacho’s break, leading to Jamie Vardy’s equaliser, Cooper fell to his knees and pounded the ground with both fists in anger over and over. He knows this about himself, that at this level it’s always been about living with the stress of playing better than you ever have before. It means these players have never been perfect. It’s a big part of how they got Leeds into the Premier League in the first place.