Leeds United 2-0 QPR: Into the machine

Leeds United are now at five 2-0 wins for the season, plus a couple of 3-0s, and the recent statistics are being declaimed around town like chilling portents. Five of their last eight opponents have failed to get a shot on target. At Elland Road, no team all season has had more than thirteen touches in the Peacocks' penalty area and no team has expected one goal. Leeds are turning up, winning, and not even coming close to conceding (except in Millwall). And lots of people, seeing and hearing this, are yearning for the six-goal opening day thrillfest against Portsmouth.

The problem United apparently have is efficiency, but that's only holding them back from winning every home game by five or six goals instead of two or three. When it comes to dominating and winning Leeds are only getting more ruthless in Beeston. The timing of opening goals has always been crucial to the tension around Daniel Farke's team, as without a timely starter doubts creep around: but against Cardiff, Leeds scored on thirty minutes, against Coventry on sixteen, Sheffield United took a while but Pascal Struijk was there on 69, Leeds had two in seven minutes against Watford, three between thirty and 38 against Plymouth, and against Queens Park Rangers Jayden Bogle was on the case on nineteen. Everything was fairly easy from then until Joel Piroe added another goal in stoppage time. Elland Road is now the place to go if you want to calm down.

Bogle's goal was actually a product of the nearest thing I've seen Farke's Leeds produce to the lost and lamented glories of Bielsista football when it involved, instead of careful recycling of possession from side to side, overhitting a cross (thanks Gjanni) that would be collected on the other wing and overhit again (thanks Jackie), repeated until the ball went into the box at a reasonable height and, I dunno, probably Bamford missed and we all demanded Ryan Edmondson to start. Leeds got into that mode here. Joe Rothwell overdid his corner, Sam Byram crossed but Pascal Struijk couldn't finish, Rothwell overhit his cross to the back post, QPR hoofed clear — towards the only player in United's half, Illan Meslier. Bogle went back to collect, Leeds reset, then it was everyone off up the other end again: Brenden Aaronson's cross was whiffed by Mateo Joseph, but Bogle was prevented from crossing back over by close marking, so he went maverick mode. Running back towards his own goal with the ball, he couldn't see a pass, so he reversed course, heading for the box and handing over to Rothwell. He dribbled to the byline, chipped to the penalty spot, and after three attackers tried and failed it was Bogle, in the six yard box, who took a cool pause amid the pinball to bury the ball in the net. See? They can do fun, after all.

Not a lot of fun, true. Aaronson had already crashed a shot off the bar and Byram had ways to score with a volley and a header. But Mateo Joseph was trying too hard with his chances and Wilf Gnonto wasn't trying hard enough with his, so it took until the 95th minute for anything of real note to happen, Joel Piroe spoiling a one-two with fellow sub Isaac Schmidt by jabbing the ball into the six yard box and then across the goalie. Joe Rodon was very excited.

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I've sometimes wondered about my feeling that Daniel Farke hasn't quite managed to take Leeds fans with him to wherever Leeds are going, but in some ways this was Elland Road heritage. As fans we have a selective memory about our gloriest years, helped by things like the 1990 promotion video emphasising the drama so much that it has songs from Rocky on the soundtrack. What it doesn't have are all the back passes Mervyn Day used to pick up, or the joy-killing offside trap that opposing teams and neutral(ish) reporters used to hate. Some of our memories have become obscured by the years with Bielsa but I always regard those as exceptional: no other coach will ever produce anything like he did at Leeds, because no other coach would ever tell their youth team that they've calculated the maximum number of goals that can be scored in a game and it's 57 (one every 95 seconds on average). Bielsa can only have orthogonal relevance to anything before or since.

And while the Don Revie era is replayed in thumping compilations of Lasher Lorimer volleys and Bremner, Giles 'n' everybody scrapping, you have to dig a little deeper for even his own players, who revered him, being frustrated by the cautious approach he ordered, the thick dossiers about the opposition that emphasised stopping the other team when Leeds could have just got on with being the better team, the afternoons when the game was won in the first half and the team eased off in the second.

I hesitate to cite Brian Clough as an authority, but there's a video from 1969 when he causes Don Revie to bristle by saying his Derby team have just been put through "the Leeds machine." The interviewer knew exactly what button Clough was prodding at, saying to Revie, "You've always said you want to be respected as a footballing side, instead of just efficient?" "I was just wondering what Brian was on about," said Revie, but he also knew very well, because it wasn't only wind-up merchants like Clough who would go on about Leeds putting efficiency over entertainment. Crowds at Elland Road would slow handclap their way through boring second halves when, with the game won, Revie would have his players conserving energy for the long season. Those reactions, and the empty terraces as the Leeds public sought entertainment elsewhere, had Revie perplexed and disappointed. What more did people want, when they had the best team in the league winning 2-0 every other week?

It was this sense of the public not being with Leeds that had Revie experimenting with Paul Trevillion's razzmatazz — although only for three months — and eventually going in for a full club-and-team rebrand in 1973/74, with bespoke Admiral kits, a friendly smiley badge, slimmed down dossiers and an emphasis on attacking football without bookings. Leeds didn't lose any of their first 29 games and became league champions, but there was a lesson for them in how this went. Leeds were so good that the entire country became obsessed with stopping them, so winning or even drawing became more and more difficult, and rather than propelling them to the title the unbeaten run was dragging them down. "There isn't a team in the world who could produce their best football under the type of pressure to which Leeds United have been subjected recently," said Revie. When they finally lost, away to Stoke, it was almost a relief, but it didn't help: in their remaining games Revie's off-the-leash Leeds lost three, drew 0-0 twice and 1-1 twice, and won just five of their last twelve. In the end, they had only scored fewer goals in a season one other time since 1962. Perhaps Revie had been on to something about defending first before taking the lead and banking the points. Showing flair, in English football, was easier said than done, which was why Eddie Gray's shins were always cut and bruised. Try to have fun and everyone would try harder to stop you.

I have a feeling that Daniel Farke is up against some of this at the moment. The real pressure this season is, after all, not to entertain but to get Leeds promoted, because with Profit & Sustainability rules and dwindling parachute payments, the implications of staying down are dire. So the highest priority is securing league points, and they have to be won against teams whose highest aspirations are time-wasting to a goalless draw. After the Plymouth match, when Wayne Rooney lined his team up with six at the back, Farke pointed out that half of Leeds' opponents this season have used specific more defensive gameplans, and QPR's manager Marti Cifuentes was another who set his team up to stop Leeds playing, while saying it wasn't how he likes his teams to play or how he usually aims to. One glaring answer for why Leeds United don't consistently produce flair-filled fireworks of football is that the other teams are absolutely terrified of letting them do it, and give everything they've got to stopping them.

Games like this can leave you wishing Leeds would attack more, but football teams need space to attack, and that's the one thing Leeds don't get given. Farke's style is described as 'risk-averse', but watching them against QPR I noticed how Struijk and Joe Rodon were standing side by side in QPR's half, the furthest players back, Leeds being so 'risk averse' that every player was within forty yards of their opponent's goal. Jack Charlton and Norman Hunter used to do this job, calmly collecting clearances before the ball could go over halfway and giving the ball to Eddie Gray for another run at them. The other option is creating space by having the defenders drop deep to tempt their opponents out, but teams like QPR are scared and won't fall for it. It's worth revisiting Bogle's goal here, because it came from a Leeds corner that produced two half chances and was cleared, and he ran back into United's half to get the ball and then, while the crowd grew frustrated, he waited and waited and waited while Rodon, Struijk and Byram ran back into their positions alongside him. That pause, which looked like risk averse caution, was key to drawing QPR just far enough out of their box that Aaronson could get in behind them to cross again and make the goal happen.

In a way, to get enjoyment out of watching this Leeds team, it helps to deliberately shift your view of things to half-full, to decide that every pause and every pass backwards is probably part of a general move forwards and look at it that way: to look at Bogle standing still and assume he's thinking of a way to go forward. But I also realise that this is perilously close to the infuriating move of telling people that the things they think are boring are actually fun and they're wrong to be bored by them. I would tell me to fuck off, in that case. But I do think there's an element of choice available, and some lassitude — and happier Saturdays — to be found in understanding the pressure Leeds are under this season, for promotion and from every opponent turning up like Dyche-squared; remembering that English football in general has never valued attacking flair much beyond how far into the stands its proponents can be kicked; that Leeds United have a proud history of mechanised smothering, of centre-backs dominating over halfway and ticking off efficient 2-0 wins — and that it's never been particularly popular. The situation at Elland Road, as it stands, is normal. Absorb all that and you, too, can alleviate the boredom like I did on Saturday, by concentrating on Jayden Bogle as he channelled Gary Kelly circa 1994, and then chuck yourself into one of the paradoxes of the season: that we need Leeds to start being this dull away, as well as home. ⭑彡