Leeds United 2-1 Preston North End: Controlling the uncontrollable

The feeling Leeds fans have been yearning for all season arrived one Saturday in mid-April, at last, near the end of the fifth-to-last game. On the pitch, Leeds United were doing the same things they've been doing all season. The forwards were spurning chances to seal victory. The goalkeeper was punching the ball in places he shouldn't. The margin was stuck, precariously, where it had been for more than an hour, at one goal. But while for almost two years this sort of thing has frustrated Leeds fans, on Saturday they were uproarious in support, delighted to be living on their nerves, in and with the players in their tension and will to win. What had changed?

Sheffield United were losing their third game in a week, that's what, and what if after all the arguments about Daniel Farke's style of football and Leeds not going for the jugular in games and the boredom of watching 2-0 win after 2-0 win, what if all that rancour and debate turned out to be irrelevant. What if the problem was never what Leeds were doing while what Leeds were doing, mainly, was winning. What if the problem was that the teams around us would never stop winning either, and never allow us to enjoy the rightful fruits of our games.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how extremely good Leeds United's results have been over the last two seasons. In the entire history of Leeds United Football Club — which you can read about in this book, hint hint — there have been only a handful of seasons with this many wins, so few defeats, as many goals scored and so few conceded. My question was, if we can't enjoy our favourite team scoring lots of goals and winning lots of games, what will we ever enjoy? And if we can't enjoy this, why is that?

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This isn't the only available answer, but Saturday made it feel like a big part: it's been hard to enjoy because Leicester City, Ipswich Town, Burnley and Sheffield United have been on our case for every minute of these two, brilliant years. Last season Leeds scored 81 goals, only the second time since 1970 that they'd scored 80 in one season. Ipswich scored 92, Leicester 89. It was only the fifth season in 105 years in which Leeds had won 27 games. But it was hard to enjoy a single one of those wins because Leicester and Ipswich won 31 and 28, and apart from a few brief days topping the table, we were always chasing their results.

Since the play-off final in May, we've had another year of watching Leeds United's theoretical excellence being suffocated by Burnley's defence and Sheffield United's relentlessness. Even when Cardiff City were beaten 7-0, the biggest winning scoreline of my entire Leeds-supporting life, one column in the league table was stubbornly arguing that our eighteenth win of the season was still bested by Sheffield United having won nineteen. What's a 7-0 worth then? Those numbers had changed by the time I wrote about the Peacocks being ace, and not in our favour: by 4th April, when I published it, Sheffield United had won three more games than Leeds. We were 2nd, soon to slip to 3rd.

Leeds, throughout their recent dip in form, have stayed pretty much the same. April 5th was when they drew 1-1 with Luton Town, and Daniel Farke was pilloried for calling it a decent point. It's all relative, I suppose, especially now we can compare our three points from three games to the week Sheffield United have just had. It was also, in retrospect, a healthy draw when it could have turned out worse, and it formed the template for a new resilience that has, since, won six points from two one-goal leads against Middlesbrough and Preston: using Pat Bamford and Isaac Schmidt as determined closers, rather than the unpredictable exuberance of Mateo Joseph and Largie Ramazani.

Karl Darlow in goal and Ethan Ampadu's move to defence haven't done any harm, either, and there's an argument that taking Illan Meslier out earlier would have got Leeds promoted by now. But between the Hull City draw that Meslier was blamed for, and the Swansea draw he was blamed for, Leeds won six games with clean sheets, two more with a goal against in each, drew three — including a 0-0 with Burnley and a 1-1 with West Brom — and lost just once. In the same period Sheffield United won every game they played apart from defeats to us and Hull and a draw with Bristol City. Even if Leeds had been fully Darlow'd up in those weeks, Sheffield United were not going to let us open the kind of gap to 3rd place that might have let us enjoy ourselves more. We could have kept all the clean sheets we liked, won all the games we wanted, but never without feeling that hot breath on our necks, stale grease and rancid butter.

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Until now. Saturday was a terrible day all around for South Yorkshire's anti-Leeds contingent. In Plymouth, Chris Wilder was discovering the downside of media training, because where within him there was one wolf there are now two, one trying to silence the other. Before the weekend the bitter old bad wolf snuck a few choice remarks past the charming new wolf he wants us to see, about some mild things the Plymouth manager had said about pressure. After the Plymouth manager turned out to be correct, Wilder sparked a brawl by objecting to the way some Pilgrims were celebrating. Not even Leeds, falling apart last season or even in 2018/19, lost three games in a row at this stage of the season. Chris Wilder's face and demeanour showed why teams going for promotion just can't be doing that sort of thing. It's not only that it becomes very difficult to make up five points in four games — that, we have to remember now that it's Monday, is not impossible. But the boost it gives to the other two teams is massive, and completely beyond your control. Even if Sheffield United win before we play Oxford on Friday, it won't get them close enough to harsh how we're buzzing off this weekend. It will be our turn to make whatever Sheffield United come up with against Cardiff City feel futile to them, a waste of their time and effort.

Meanwhile in Beeston, Preston North End turned up with Paul Heckingbottom and Stuart McCall in the dugout, the Blades' coaching staff as-was, Chris Wilder from Wish. I can imagine the anguished phone calls on Saturday night as the respective team coaches wended their ways home. 'What was it Hecky, how did you let Leeds win?' 'I dunno Chris mate, it were one of them things.' 'Well, how were your lads wi' ball?' 'Not so good Chris, they couldn't hardly pass to each other'. 'And what about wi'out ball, Paul? What about that?' 'They weren't right good at that either to be honest with you, Chris. But never mind eh. How were the pies down in Plymouth?' 'Pies?' I can hear Chris Wilder yelling back at Hecky. 'Pies? Them muppets served us pasties, and you bet I'll be making a weird reference to that being a personal insult in a totally unrelated press conference two years from now!'

Heckingbottom's managerial project was inspired by his time at Bradford City, when he complained bitterly about there being 'too many dickheads' in football, and was told that he should become a manager and do something about it. I'm not personally sure about any 'no dickheads' criteria that brings Ched Evans, Milutin Osmajić and Peter Ridsdale together under one roof, but I suppose that's Hecky's business, not mine. I doubt he will have been pleased, though, by the way his dickheads, sorry, his players were constantly being beaten to the ball by Leeds players on Saturday. It was one of those games when it's hard to parse whether white shirts kept getting in first because they wanted 'it' more, or because the blue shirts were already on the beach. Given what I know of the north-west coastline I doubt it can be the latter, but I saw a lot like end-of-season Hecky's Leeds circa April 2018 about Preston. Maybe Peter Ridsdale should send a box of videotapes to Marcelo Bielsa and try to get him interested.

Statuesque

If I could I’d take along a huge old fashioned broom to the last match, and use it to beat the dust from the backside of every single one of the players for letting us down so badly this season.

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The credit in Leeds United's column on the day was for doing all the things they've been doing in all the 41 preceding games, even the ones they've lost. That includes giving away a very useful early lead to a surprising equaliser, including letting umpteen chances to extend their lead go by both before and after Preston scored. Manor Solomon's fourth minute goal was simply made, as cutting in from the wing he was helped into space by a one-two with Ilia Gruev, then beautifully finished, as he curved a powerful shot into the far top corner. Unfortunately Preston's equaliser, two minutes later, was also pretty good, Kaine Kesler-Hayden fooling Junior Firpo and hitting the far corner himself, with more power than Solomon, less curve. In less than ten minutes Leeds were back in front, and from our point of view it was a joy to see Jayden Bogle in the six yard box, getting on the end of a cross like he's Luke Ayling. From Hecky's point of view, though, this goal was the dickhead to end all dickheads, as it came from Preston's throw-in by their own corner flag. Bogle won it. Piroe had space to head the ball in the air, then bring it down on his chest, unchallenged for quite some time, and pass to Gruev who spent all day being intelligently available to help his teammates. He played square to Solomon and although he was challenged on his way into the penalty area, the ball still went to Firpo anyway. Likewise, his one-two with Solomon was deflected by a defender, but Solomon had no problem getting to the ball before Stefán Þórðarson. He crossed into the six yard box, and Bogle ran between two ball-watching defenders to score.

It was clear, from all this and more, that Leeds were a much better team than Preston and playing like it. North End were just chaff, so while there wasn't the sort of gulf that could have built another Cardiff scoreline, there wasn't much to stop Leeds from scoring two or three more. Well, there was Joel Piroe. In any of the 41 preceding games the performance Piroe put in would have driven fans barmy, creating online demands for redrawing the team's entire attacking philosophy, getting the comments on his post-match Instagram post closed. As it was, he had to endure some very pointed singing of Pat Bamford's name, while resisting the urge to shout back at the crowd about what they were singing about Bamford against Leicester and Newcastle, spring 2023. But as chance after chance reached its hand out to Piroe, his misses became mere background to the goals being scored down in Devon. Perhaps this was some sort of cosmic balance: as long as Piroe didn't score, Plymouth would. And then Bamford came on and didn't score either, so Plymouth could score again. The Pilgrims, with help this week from Oxford and Millwall, were giving Elland Road the licence to relax, to enjoy the sunshine, to pat Piroe on the back and say never mind, we got the right result anyway, you'll score them next time.

If the league table was still how it was last weekend, with Leeds a point behind the top two in 3rd, I doubt Piroe would be getting as many slaps on the back as smacks round the face, which has been the Leeds team's common thanks for winning games this season, and last. Good results have followed good games and been followed by frustration and anger because other teams also played well and got good results, as if there was something Joel Piroe or Illan Meslier could or should have done to stop Sheffield United before now.

But all it took was the whisper of two goals at Home Park and the whisper of a chance of taking a five point lead into Easter to shift the Elland Road crowd from generally dissatisfied to generally disordered. Rather than waiting for the players to impress us, the old business of singing to support the team was suddenly back in fashion and the old ground was loudly chanting and cheering, in sun-dappled yellow and white, and beckoning the bulldozers in. Promotion means redevelopment, so if all the post-match party planning calculations work out, the two big celebrations that could be coming could be the last hurrahs of the West Stand as a party backdrop. Not that it's been used for that much lately. If Easter isn't quite our moment, there's still a trip down to Plymouth on the final weekend, and instead of the 'Bournemouth we're sorry' banners of 1990 perhaps we can take some 'Argyle we thank you' flags, and do a general litter-pick around the town centre to impress Marcelo and annoy Chris Wilder even more. ⭑彡