Leeds United 2-2 Brighton: The initiative
A year since they sacked Bielsa to 'accelerate the coaching transition', Leeds can no longer be protagonists in their own stadium against Brighton, who used their head coach's walkout in September to make their team even better.
Leeds United's players had to concentrate for this league point and should be pleased about it. They won't have many more difficult days at Elland Road this season. Saturday teetered always on the edge of storm as a team coming back from London with two defeats, trying to find balance and safety with a new manager, didn't only need a result for the league table but to justify the club's 10 per cent increase on the cost of season tickets. There was nothing about that in the programme from Angus Kinnear, who skipped his column. It was up to Javi Gracia and the players to make it seem a price worth paying.
It was hard for the players to impress in front of a crowd so close to snapping. Jackie Harrison, the villain of Stamford Bridge, was the game's best example of the nervous energy. He started as if he was still in West London, dawdling over a pass that would have sent Pat Bamford through, running into defenders and getting tackled. Defending on his own goal line in the second half, he got his legs mixed up and either one of those or one of Solly March's put the ball into the net and put Brighton back in front. But before that, he'd set up a late first half equaliser by blocking Brighton's pass out, chasing the ball along the camber of the touchline before it could topple out of play, and popping it to Bamford, who went for goal with his right foot and, thanks to a deflection, scored off the bar. It was classic Harrison, never thinking a cause can be lost. Throughout the game, Harrison was fizzing crosses with quality but without a finisher, two reaching Luke Ayling at the back post but not becoming the goals they could have. He did it himself, then: receiving a short corner from Wilf Gnonto, he curled the ball into the far top corner, a beauty to make the score 2-2. Afterwards, crowd consensus had it that Harrison had played badly. I think he played well, but it's the mistakes speaking louder at Leeds.
Brighton were a bigger factor in the game than Harrison, and the worst possible visitors to Elland Road at this time. Leeds fans were absolutely not in the mood for a good Brighton team, but they got one. Were Manchester City or Liverpool wearing the dayglo kits, there might have been some understanding about the way Leeds stood off, letting the away team play, relinquishing initiative in their own yard. But this was Brighton. Fabian Delph used to score pisstake goals against them in an athletics stadium in League One. It was hard for Leeds fans to take so much submission to what felt like an unnatural order, and they let their players know it, shouting and urging and booing, demanding to know what was going on.
What was happening was that Javi Gracia was trying to make sure Leeds didn't get demolished by their antithesis. Brighton's recently installed manager, Roberto De Zerbi, has progressed Graham Potter's team into a way of playing that, first, looks unusual. From kick-off they passed the ball back to goalkeeper Luke Steele and he stood on it, waiting and waiting, and you could immediately feel the confusion. Secondly, it's designed as a repudiation of all the high press franticism of everything Jesse Marsch trained Leeds players to do for the last year. It's been normal for a while to try beating high pressing teams by tempting them into traps and playing around them. De Zerbi's Brighton set traps on extreme mode, happy to keep the ball around their six yard box as consecutive passes between centre-backs and goalie count up into double figures and minutes tick by. Like the last temptation of Marsch they will draw RB-trained forwards higher and higher, making the space beyond them bigger and bigger. Playing this way against Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool forgemasters, De Zerbi's Brighton won 3-0 in the league, 2-1 in the cup.