Leeds United 2-0 Derby County: Play to win

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It's time for a gentle reminder that going 2-0 up before half-time then cruising through the second half without adding another goal was the stuff that used to get Don Revie's Leeds booed and jeered by the Elland Road crowd. It was the reason casual fans gave for not traipsing to Beeston when there was better fun to be had in town.

Elland Road has always been a bit uneasy about its relationship to entertainment. One of my favourite little discoveries while writing 100 Years of Leeds United was a column by Leeds Mercury sportswriter Hugh Whitfield, about the character of fans at the Old Peacock Ground compared to the happy supportive family cheering on Hunslet rugby league up the hill:

Yet if things go wrong for a match or two at Elland Road — as they do with all clubs occasionally — you may find yourself in the most sarcastic crowd in the world, and may hear comments on the Leeds United team that make you wonder whether you have got among a group of supporters of the visiting team.

That was 1934. That said, at the end of 1931/32 — when Leeds had just won promotion to the First Division — Whitfield also observed:

It has been a baffling season for Leeds United’s supporters. Here you have a team that has had a highly successful season, and won promotion, and yet it has provided its own spectators with scarcely one really good match at Elland Road.

And the local letters pages of this era are strewn with debates about winning versus entertaining, and chairman Major Braithwaite's appeals to the city to get behind its soccer team, and the dedicated supporters objecting to being expected to sing and cheer through boring rubbish, and the casual stayaways refusing to be told what to do.

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All of which is to say that as the wind blew goal-kicks back to goalkeepers and the rain raised the water levels in the well beneath the pitch, this wasn't a problem of modern football we were watching at Elland Road on Saturday, this was Leeds United heritage. Although to be fair to the crowd, most people were shivering too much to moan. The sound you heard wasn't Premier League style clappers, if was people trying to grit their chattering teeth.

It was another case this season of Leeds struggling to win against a team whose only hope was not to lose. Struggling, at least, until they took the lead, which shocked Derby County into giving up another goal straightaway, then subdued them into ticking through the second half as if waiting for their bath and the bus home. The best bits of the second half were when the visitors forgot their worries for a moment and tried to score, and perhaps the best tactical innovation Leeds could offer this season is encouraging the other team. Come on, you're not that bad, have a go, come on, at least try.

The tactical innovation Leeds did come up with was not a good sign, as Joe Rodon headed the opening goal from a corner like a harbinger of doom. United's lack of goals from corners became a meme for a while, and to some a source of actual anger, but it's always been a case of being careful what we wish for from set-pieces. The games can be uneventful enough without Leeds getting good at corners and settling things that way. If goals are only coming two-by-two at Elland Road, at least let one of them be a thunderbastard. Instead the second one here was scored by — and here I refer you back to the 1930s attitude of Elland Road towards its own players — that bastard Max Wöber, finishing off a deflected cross from that other bastard, Brenden Aaronson, in the six yard box. This was because Wöber's interpretation of wing-back — after taking over from the bastard of previous seasons but no more, Junior Firpo — looks, judging by his runs off the ball, a lot like playing centre-forward. Which is just barmy enough that if he keeps it up I might start liking him, the bastard.

And that was basically the game, a dour first half settled by two goals before half-time, followed by a snoozy second half that needed the howling wind to keep us all awake. It's fair enough to write this one off to the conditions and agree it was fine to just tick it off the list with another 2-0 win, this season's sixth. But that didn't stop fans on social media, before and after, wistfully watching Mateusz Klich's goal against Derby County from 2018: the fast, free-flowing movement, the zip of the passing, the speed up the pitch, the finish from outside the area. Ah, Bielsa Bielsa Bielsa.

Apart from the nostalgia and wishful thinking, there is some use in watching that goal again and seeing the difference, not in how Leeds play, but in what that team and Farke's play against. When Samu Saiz took the ball over halfway in August 2018, he was up against one defender, and beyond him were two more defenders, Kemar Roofe, and acres of empty green grass. By the time the ball got to Klich on the edge of the area he had two Derby midfielders to his right and one centre-back ahead of him, with time to set himself up between them and pick his place in the bottom corner. As his shot zooms into the goal, the camera pans past a grand total of two Derby defenders in the penalty area.

Derby County 1-4 Leeds United: Two Games

Frank Lampard has perfected the in-game suit, the respectful soundbite, and the pensive touchline stance; as Bielsa beamed kindly at him at full-time, like a vet about to do what’s best for Lampard’s favourite pet, Frank looked shocked.

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This Saturday, several times, I was looking at Joe Rodon on the ball, in Derby's half, with 5,000 square yards of empty grass containing a grand total of Illan Meslier behind him, and the other twenty players crammed into a narrow strip across the pitch in front of him. You could get Andrea Pirlo, Diego Maradona and Pablo Hernandez together to look at that situation and they'd whistle, wipe their brows, and go call up Zinedine Zidane to see if he had any ideas. Zizou would tell them, 'I'm here with Jordan Botaka, and we're both stumped.'

Comparisons with Marcelo Bielsa's time are futile because he is such a singular manager, but what Farke's Leeds can do is make us think about that time again and even appreciate it in new ways. How come Mateusz Klich did have so much space, in that and in other games? Was Bielsa better at coaching players to create the room? Maybe, although later on he faced the problem Farke has, of teams just refusing to engage altogether, not getting drawn in to the trap. This was partly to do with time and the slow erosion towards the cliché of 'getting found out', but also style and reputation.

Opposing managers thought they could have a go at Leeds. The way Bielsa set them up was risky, almost reckless. The one-on-one marking and gung-ho approach that relied on fitness and application could fall apart if players didn't stick to tasks that had looked, in previous seasons, beyond their capabilities. Visiting players would back themselves to beat, like, it's only Luke Ayling to the ball — then were bemused when they couldn't. And elated when they could: there was always the hope of emulating Cardiff City who were dismantled 3-0 in an hour but drew 3-3 with just thirty minutes to hand.

Opponents also thought they could have a go at Marcelo Bielsa. He'd come to Leeds after three disastrous months at Lille and a long spell out of football. Before that he'd lasted four days at Lazio. That came after he rage-quit from Marseille. Most people knew him from the 2002 World Cup when he was, as he put it himself, responsible for "The worst failure in the history of the Argentina national team." Part of the subtext of 'spygate' was how, when Bielsa called his sudden press conference, many of us feared he'd be announcing his resignation. It was a feeling that never quite went away, that he could be provoked into either quitting, blowing up, or blowing up Frank Lampard.

There's none of this hope when opposing managers look at Daniel Farke. From coffee and cake on the sofa to refusing to dance on tables or let off fireworks of football, he's unflappable. And his record is formidable, at this level anyway. From 138 Championship fixtures at Norwich he clocked 1.82 points per game, 1.57 goals for per game, 1.11 goals against. Add Leeds and he's on 1.87ppg, 1.63 goals for, 1.03 against. If you filter for just his title winning seasons, when he'd got his best teams together, Norwich only lost thirteen of 92 games. You can't just hit him with the 'not how things are done here' hammer and hope he'll crack (although in four games, Farke has never bested Lampard — something to fix in February). Championship managers have been trying, and failing, to rattle this guy for years.

There's not much hope from looking at his current Leeds team, either. You can't put the Calendar Cup in the trophy cabinet, but you can make a manager twitch when you tell them Leeds have the best points total of any team in the Football League in 2024. You can make them think twice, before they get on their bus, by letting them know Leeds have only lost three league games at Elland Road since Farke took charge. You can get them second guessing, as they ponder their plans on the motorway, until the best place to park this luxury coach becomes their own tempting goalmouth.

Which brings us to Derby's Paul Warne. He's one of the more likeable managers in football, I think partly because he was the fitness coach before taking caretaker charge of Rotherham. He's been riding a wave since, sometimes seeming like he can hardly believe his luck finding out he has a real knack for this. It gives him the relatable air of someone who might wake up one day and think, you know what, I've had a good run and I've nothing more to prove, I think I'll go enjoy life again. I wouldn't patronise Warne by saying he was out of his depth against Farke — he's a good manager. But I think he's someone with a healthy appreciation of the depths he works in, who recognises the moment to put his hands up and say, basically, look, their players are faster than ours.

"Out of all the games we have played in so far, that was the most unbalanced game I think we've played in," Warne said. "Even our fastest players couldn't get past their defenders. That is probably the most uncomfortable I have felt on the side of the pitch, as in, the lads are giving us everything they can, it's very difficult to criticise them, but fundamentally there was a gulf in class."

This is the demoralising problem that we're watching home and away sides working through at Elland Road lately: teams aren't expecting to have a chance, so they play like they don't have a hope, and that makes it difficult for Leeds to create their chances, until eventually the Peacocks punish them. For Leeds fans its impressive rather than delightful, and sometimes you wish the players would just pull their socks up, be as good as visiting teams think they are, and smash in goal after goal. But I refer you back to the problem of space, and how sometimes in football — especially in Division Two — you just have to get the job done. Don Revie signed Bobby Collins to help his players fight their way out, to worry about playing brilliant football later. Howard Wilkinson swapped John Sheridan for Vinnie Jones because Shez was a Rolls Royce stuck in a farmer's field. Marcelo Bielsa's first step was to have world-class fitness in a second-tier league and run other teams into the ground. Times have changed in that fight is no longer as necessary, because there are few teams coming to Elland Road looking to scrap. Instead Farke's Leeds need their modern version of unlovely things, like persistence, concentration, and not missing the change in tone when a team does come at them playing to win. Which will be Middlesbrough on Tuesday night, which will hopefully be a welcome change. ⭑彡