Leeds United 1-4 Tottenham: here when it’s a bad time
Andrea Radrizzani was hoping owning Leeds United would net him around £400m profit. But football is structured to make fans think the players are the greedy ones, ‘stealing a living’. Which is a long way of saying I still like you, Luke Ayling.
In the end we only got as far as the beginning, and Leeds United going down the way they’ve been going all season: waiting and hoping for someone else to save them at the last moment. Sam Allardyce started with six defenders and an unfamiliar back five, hoping a clean sheet and friendly scorelines at Everton and Bournemouth would help a nicked goal make the difference or set up a late push for safety. Leeds would make the last ninety minutes of the season last as long as they could, hoping for a chance.
After the World Cup, Leeds had chances, but instead of taking them, they were always waiting and hoping for the next one until the season had no chances left to give. Maybe at home to West Ham, or at home to Brentford, then surely away to Nottingham Forest, but none of those chances were taken to be wins. So it had to be away to Everton, but wasn’t. There was a brief, stumbling revival but losing to Crystal Palace put Leeds back on the treadmill of wasting their chance and hoping for the next one: Fulham looked winnable, Leicester had to be beaten, Bournemouth was an opportunity, three points were there to be taken from West Ham. So many opportunities to get just one, season-changing win, all squandered, until there was less than an opportunity left, at home to Tottenham, when even a win might not change the season.
It was all over after ninety seconds anyway, when Tottenham scored, and the next 88 minutes plus stoppage time did last as long as Allardyce wanted, but not the way he wanted. As Leeds players sent passes astray and tripped over the ball in attack, midfield and defence, I looked at the clock, hoping at least this would all be over soon. The game was only twenty minutes old. Twenty minutes is a long time at the end of a season like this, ninety minutes even longer. Futility is hard to take when it means good effort being wasted for nothing. But there was no point in Leeds being this bad in this game.
Allardyce sharply defended his strategy after the match. “I’ve just said we’ve got 21 attempts at goals so we had more pressure on Tottenham than Tottenham had on us,” he said. “We were just inept at converting those attempts and pressures. I’m sorry for getting a bit touchy but it’s a bad day.” What he seemed to be missing was that those 21 chances might have been turned into something more had they not been falling to players like Weston McKennie and Robin Koch, defensive players shoved forward, but to some of the many players on the bench who, whatever faults they may have, have scored goals within recent memory. Even more chances might have been created had Wilf Gnonto and Crysencio Summerville been crossing from wide positions, instead of Luke Ayling and Pascal Struijk. Taking off the full-backs might have weakened Leeds defensively, in theory, but they were playing in attack and anyway Spurs scored four. Allardyce might also point out that Javi Gracia tried fielding teams in which the defenders defended and the attackers attacked, and that ended by needing Big Sam to save the day.
Misusing resources has been a theme at Leeds this season. Marcelo Bielsa built a team here of attacking players who dominated possession but struggled to defend without the ball. Jesse Marsch changed that to a team that attacked by tackling and dribbling, playing more often without the ball, without improving their capability to defend against the rising tides of possession against them. In a brief interlude, Javi Gracia tried to find balance. In an even briefer fever dream, Sam Allardyce tried to rely on defending and passing to get Leeds out of trouble, while the majority of the squad’s attacking players sat on the bench and watched.
The other major part of the problem has been the resources themselves, best summed up by the right flank. According to Jesse Marsch, he spent nearly two years talking to Victor Orta about taking over from Bielsa at Leeds. But despite their apparently detailed planning, the season ended with their chosen successor for Luke Ayling, attacking right-back Rasmus Kristensen, playing horribly at centre-half, while Ayling, a week after telling the press he had nothing left in his tank against West Ham, looked that way as a right wing-back.