Leeds United 2-0 Hull City: True Faith 2020
We looked at the league table as if seeing it properly for the first time. Leeds United in 1st place. Secure in the automatic promotion places by eleven points. I said last season it was going to be fascinating to see how Leeds messed it up and, well, I was right. This season?
Even with a 2-0 deficit they kept coming bravely forward, throwing a kitchen sink before them into stoppage time, praying for favours from Hope, always one of Elland Road's cruellest spirits.
That was December 2018, when impossible late wins over Aston Villa and Blackburn Rovers were Leeds United's consecutive sixth and seventh, inspiring crazy belief that even with seconds remaining the Peacocks would find a way to beat Hull. Put Pontus Jansson up front and everybody except Bailey Peacock-Farrell just a few yards behind him, and why should three goals in ninety seconds feel beyond Marcelo Bielsa's Leeds?
They were beyond them, and the end of that winning run was the start of our disillusion. Yes, we'd had hope. When we came back to the Championship this August, we had to have it again.
Now it's December 2019 and Leeds have won seven in a row again; they're also unbeaten in ten and eleven points clear of 3rd place at the top of the division. The desperation to succeed that took Leeds through last Christmas against Villa and Blackburn, and kept them trying to the last second against Hull, has gone, replaced by a fraught excitement that is making 2020 almost too painful to think about. How can it hurt so much to be eleven points clear? How much pain will we feel if we finally get what we want?
The difference in Leeds United compared to last winter was diagrammed by this game against Hull City. Leeds have been performing nervelessly for a while, with such total trust in their process that at times it has made them inert. They can play and play and play the same and never notice when the clock has run down and the game has gone.
That has been replaced in recent weeks by a more alert opportunism. Leeds still build for Bielsa the way they've been taught, but when a chance comes to profit by doing something else, they take it. Late, matchwinning counter attacks at Luton and Reading. A goalkeeper fumbling in the first minutes against Middlesbrough. A half-cleared corner Alioski'd on the volley, with a sucker-punch counter attack to put Huddersfield beyond help. Leeds still struggle sometimes to make the best of their own hard creative work. But if the door is left ajar, they'll kick it down. Leeds have learned to be pragmatic, clinical and cynical. It means the kitchen sink can stay in the kitchen.
This was an old-fashioned game in some ways. On a dark and stormy winter's night in Leeds, a cat explored the pitch before kick-off, Hull forced a change of ends, and one of their players took a Helder Costa shot square in his balls. There was a pitch invader and a broken public address system, and it wasn't hard to imagine buying a Green 'Un football paper and a full-size Wagon Wheel on the way home.