Leeds United 1-1 WBA: Old ways

Elland Road’s lowest league attendance since the visit of QPR at the start of December 2018 was not a crowd of people in a good mood. The pre-gaming lacked the choons and WKD build up of a good Friday night. A day of disappointment – Tyler Adams to Bournemouth, there he goes – was followed by an end-of-the-work-week review with Angus Kinnear, speaking to Leeds United Supporters’ Trust, insisting without convincing that everything will be fine in September. Then, as night fell and fans made their way to the football ground, news broke that Wilf Gnonto had put in a written transfer request. We should all have been as firm as Daniel Farke was with his staff on Friday: “Listen,” he told them, “till after the game I don’t want to hear anything about any transfers.” A wise man. And a focused man, if he was able to resist asking why there was such an increase to the vitriol against Wilf Gnonto coming from all four sides of Elland Road.

This was all much more like the way it was and perhaps these are necessary steps. People have asked what it will take for Leeds fans to get over Marcelo Bielsa, and I’ve often told them, ‘winning’. There’d have been no problems with Jesse Marsch if he’d won fifteen games last season. But there might be another way: losing. Or at least not clinging to the idea that we’re still that team, with that status. Farke often refers to the ‘hangover’ of relegation and he’s right that, one way or another, the headache has to lift and a new day has to start. And that day has to start in the EFL Championship, the division Leeds now play in.

The struggle to accept that hasn’t helped the mood about the outgoing transfers and loans. It feels like it should be more complicated, but it’s simple. Why does Tyler Adams want to join Bournemouth? They play in the Premier League. Jackie Harrison to Everton? Premier League. Gnonto going there too? Premier League. Brenden Aaronson, Robin Koch and Max Wöber all went to the Bundesliga, Diego Llorente and Rasmus Kristensen to Serie A. The common factor is consistent but painful to acknowledge: footballers don’t want to play in a second division if they can help it.

Watching this game with West Bromwich Albion, after last weekend’s dire game in Birmingham, makes the point for them. We wouldn’t watch this if we didn’t have to. It’s heartening but also miserable that Leeds have let so many good players go, and the squad has constricted to its barest elements, but our team still looks about par for the division now we’ve compared with our renewed Midlands acquaintances. For a while our old pal Carlos Corberan was our presumed heir to Bielsa, but here he was frantic on the touchline waving and gesticulating and pleading with a group of experienced Championship players – Matt Phillips, Jonathan Swift, Jed Wallace, all good for this level – who didn’t seem to have a clue what he was on about. The niceties of his approach were lost on a muggy, rainy night in Yorkshire in August in the EFL.

Another blaring indicator that where we are is what we become was the referee, Matthew Donohue. Back in March, Sunderland manager Tony Mowbray was calling him “incompetent”, and after this game Farke was compelled to make an exception to his rule that, “normally I never comment on decisions of the referee”. That was hard to maintain after West Brom took the lead from a scuffed corner, when a scuffed shot was deflected then finished by Brandon Thomas-Asante, who was offside, and scored with his hand. In the Premier League, VAR means this is a no-goal, but in the Championship, there is no video to assist the ref – not one he can use, anyway. The rest of us can see it at home or on phones straight away. Joe Gelhardt should have had a penalty, too, while the nine players who went in the book were mostly as bemused as Dan James, who didn’t understand why there weren’t more yellows or reds for the varieties of clothes-lining he kept being met with. “It’s sad for him,” Farke said about Donohue, “even more disappointing and sad for us.” And it’s typical of the Championship, but almost a relief after the Premier League, to spend an evening down in Beeston howling at the ref.

Going behind, early in the second half, was the beginning of Leeds taking charge in a way I’d hoped they would, building on a good first half, only they were beaten to it by West Brom. At 1-0 down, now Dan James was in charge of beating Darnell Furlong, who Corberan said was restricted by his early booking for blocking James, and after twenty minutes the system worked. The system included hesitant midfielding by Pascal Struijk, eventually clipping a ball to Georginio Rutter that, after his flick missed Joe Gelhardt, broke to James on the wing. Just the fear that he might beat Furlong and Wallace was enough to take them out of the game, and the cross between them dipped just where a goal-hungry no.9 would want it. In the absence of one of them, Luke Ayling barged in at the back post to head into the net, then barged across the front of the Kop, pounding his chest and scowling, his body language making a point about who is with this and who isn’t. “I’m not going to lie,” he told Sky after the game, “I can’t wait for the window to close so that we know what we’ve got.”

That mystery doesn’t end with personnel. Dan James’ relentless performance, particularly in the second half when he almost scored from a shot that was tipped away from the top corner, when he kept good quality on his crosses, and when he kept running at and between defenders inside and outside, was a reminder that we still don’t know what he’s really capable of. Leeds still don’t have a league win since the start of April, but in the second half they started looking like a team remembering what to do to do it. Illan Meslier fingertipped a close range shot from Wallace onto the post, the sort of thrilling save he used to be making three times a game. Jamie Shackleton, who was an attacking midfielder in the youth teams before his energy made him a box-to-box player with right-back tendencies, refound some verve for taking defenders on and getting into the box. Rutter, playing as a striker and struggling for most of the night to shake off the idea that he’s anything more than a boutique Jay-Roy Grot, had his best moment – a shot just wide – at the end of the first ninety minutes he’s completed since 5th November, back when he was playing for Hoffenheim. The squad needs more. But there’s more to be got from the players already in it, if they can start remembering more consistently what they used to do that got them to where they are.

What’s missing, apart from numbers – Farke only had five outfield players on the bench – is imagination, to lift this team above the dull Championship mire, and a finisher to make that imagination worth something. Farke expected a bumpy August and the team’s approach reflects a strong desire for September. Patience in possession often became caution, to the crowd’s frustration, but there is safety in league points and even a draw is a way for confidence to grow. Seven minutes of stoppage time fizzled out through refereeing pedantry and United opting to put a decent night’s work in their pocket rather than risk throwing it all away. Leeds have to play with what they’ve got, and they don’t have a game changer, a player who can turn one point into three at the end of a night. Farke is finding more success by not thinking about five minutes at the end of one game now, but about 43 more games when he might – should – have more to work with.

For now, Leeds are adapting, to Farke, to his tactics, to the division, to the players coming and the players going, to the refereeing, and to maybe feeling like their old selves again, and playing like it. To not being that club anymore, but this club, and whatever it’s about to be. ★彡

(Originally published at The Square Ball)