Leeds United 2-2 Newcastle United: The knack

By the end Elland Road looked like it was hosting a schools game, including the embarrassing angry parent being led away after confronting the visiting manager.

Elland Road’s dugouts are a symbol of Leeds United’s lack of progress since promotion in 2020. Back then, the talk between seasons was of how and when those Premier League, ‘proper club’ racing car seats would be installed at the front of the John Charles Stand, which is named for the player sold to Juventus to pay for its construction, in 1957. It was the first expected step towards demolishing the West Stand altogether, replacing it with something state of the art, or at least new. In the meantime giving Marcelo Bielsa somewhere comfortable to ignore while he sat on a bucket would make Leeds look a touch more Premier League on the worldwide feed.

As it turned out, the rules pretty much let Leeds stick with what they had, so without anybody to enforce a change Leeds just left the dugouts as they had been for decades. And this season, with new rules allowing nine substitutes to sit on a bench designed in the days of five, things have been looking a little cramped down there.

So it wasn’t just disappointment that led Jackie Harrison, then Rodrigo, to trudge off the pitch when their numbers went up, receive some desultory high-fives, and slump to the ground off to the side, off the bench. The bench itself was full of kids. In the centre was Illan Meslier, banging the dugout to support his teammates and throwing Adam Forshaw’s discarded shirt to the crowd behind. With him were seventeen-year-old Archie Gray, and Pascal Struijk, Brenden Aaronson, Georginio Rutter, Crysencio Summerville and Sam Greenwood — who came off at half-time — all 23 or under. It looks cramped and boisterous, and probably stinks of Lynx. Weary from the game and disappointed by not being part of it any longer, Harrison and Rodrigo preferred sitting on the grass with their coats and sports bottles piled on top of them. Rodrigo preferred, in some moments, to not even look at the action, lost in his own thoughts.

That wasn’t a sulk. At full-time both Rodrigo and Harrison were up to shake hands, clap people on the back, applaud the fans. It looked more like the same frustration Pat Bamford was feeling on the pitch. The feeling of being really good at something, and no longer being able to do it. It was painful for Jackie and Rodrigo, feeling like they could affect the game, decide the result, make the cross or shot that makes the difference, to be told to sit down and watch. And it must be painful for Bamford to find that, after two seasons fighting against his painful body, everything that took him from Nottingham to Chelsea to Leeds to England to being the Premier League’s fourth top scorer in 2020/21 isn’t working anymore. With all the talent he has, with all the work he has put into his career, with the confidence gained from setting up Leeds’ first goal against Newcastle, Bamford was justified to think he could score the penalty that would put Leeds 2-0 up.