Leeds United 2-3 Fulham: Gloomy Sunday

A sodden morning of murk barely allowing afternoon to happen was not kind to those Leeds fans, not inclined to give up their tickets, who trudged through puddles outside and inside Elland Road for a grim Sunday of duty instead of pleasure. Leeds United are playing, so we have to go. With no domestic television coverage, no glamorous opponent, no razzle and no dazzle, this was the Premier League showing its arse, hardly distinguishable from the Championship we longed for so long to escape. At one point Fulham hit a long ball up to Aleksandar Mitrovic and Liam Cooper headed it back over halfway, and amid the damp muttering crowd the Champo vibes were strong. This could have been any game, anywhere, at any time, the only difference from 2017 that Leeds are bereft and clueless at the bottom end of a different table. The more time passes since Marcelo Bielsa was fired, the more Faustian that pact looks. Maybe that did secure Leeds United's Premier League status. But did we pay for it with our club's soul?

In the here and now, Jesse Marsch's mad week continued, and at time of writing it is somehow lurching into a fortnight of misadventure and what feels like a doomed trip to Anfield. After four changes at Leicester, Marsch made six changes here, and nobody is really sure why. If this was mitigation against three games in a week, it didn't work, and exposed Marsch as not up to a simple Premier League obstacle. And if that's a fitness issue, why is that a problem now? Whatever inspired the changes, the solutions ignored all good sense. Whenever Mateusz Klich has played from the bench this season he has looked good, but with Tyler Adams missing, Sam Greenwood started in midfield. I suppose it worked at Brentford when we were desperate. Here, Greenwood did fine until Klich replaced him. In attack, whenever Joe Gelhardt has been seen, he's looked well suited to the football Marsch wants to play, and he set up a stoppage time goal here by driving through Fulham's defence, tackling to keep the ball, then sliding a superb pass for Crysencio Summerville to finish on top of the goalkeeper. It was all made by Gelhardt, and it was a textbook Marsch goal, and in a three-game week when Leeds have struggled with everything but in particular with scoring, Gelhardt has been brought on for a grand total of 21 minutes of regulation time.

There's not much to add beyond what happened at Leicester on Thursday, except to say that despite — or because of — changing half the team this was a continuation of it, and therefore worse. Leeds started brightly, a good couple of minutes in the opening stages earning an appreciative round of applause from the Elland Road crowd. It looked like more of the usual near quarter of an hour when Fulham woke up and broke through, but Marc Roca's block on the line and Robin Koch's clearance suggested Leeds were up for the work involved in not letting this fall apart. Five minutes later Brenden Aaronson set up Jackie Harrison by passing as ever across the front of the box; this time it put Harrison through but his shot was blocked, chance lost until the spinning ball was nodded in by Rodrigo and Leeds were ahead. This was the stuff! Leeds United, capitalising with a goal while they were on top. Maybe things were going to go their way at last.

Maybe things would have kept going their way if Leeds hadn't conceded three dopey times from set-pieces. Luke Ayling let Mitrovic ahead of him at a corner, to head in through Illan Meslier's hands at the near post, so Fulham were level within five minutes. In the second half, a true judgement on the team's organisation, as Pascal Struijk, Aaronson and Harrison debated who should press the second ball from a corner and left Bobby Decordova-Reid to head the cross in unmarked. Then a third from a throw-in, when Cooper's feet were flat as Mitrovic darted to receive, leaving Koch no chance of safely tacking Harrison Reed and a simple way for Willian to score. You might think, of all people, that Ayling and Cooper would know what not to do with Mitrovic.