Leeds United 3-0 Luton Town: Cultural amnesia
This week's contrast with Luton illuminated something about a good job well done, for the second summer running, in making sure that ain't us.
One by one teams we thought we ought to worry about are coming to Elland Road and being pushed around, aside and over. Luton Town, now. What has happened to Luton? They were supposed to be good. Premier League last season, and all that. Even their away kit is bad. How do you have a bad Umbro kit?
Last week Luton chief executive Gary Sweet used his programme notes to tell supporters that over the international break he had decided to 'collectively delve in detail and search our souls' to work out why they're so bad this season, especially away from home. (He should have asked me: it's the kit.) 'Our unsatisfactory away performances and results is a topic which we’ll certainly not hide from', he wrote, and that means declaring that, 'our club's culture has been under attack ... brought on by ourselves'.
He goes on over several paragraphs to say that, after their rise through the divisions, getting relegated from the Premier League has, basically, spoiled things. 'A stall at some point was more than inevitable', he writes, 'but it was always about how we recover from the impact'. The impact includes such things as having, 'unscrupulous agent after unscrupulous agent take a pop at selling many of our players an unrealistic fantasy which was a somewhat unplanned and hard to navigate disruption'.
Sweet ended by reminding everyone why it's a good thing Angus Kinnear doesn't do programme notes anymore, telling fans:
...what I would urge everyone to be willing to accept is the submission that this is a process that has needed to run its course, but for us, collectively, to battle on and uphold the ‘Luton-way.’ This is our own battle and we are determined to overcome it. After an inspiring coming of minds over the last few days, we are motivated by the head-strong determination from everyone which we hope will reveal itself today and, more pertinently, at Leeds and Norwich in the coming days.
They did beat Hull at Kenilworth Road, but the Tigers were soon sacking their unpopular manager Tim Walter anyway. Then we got to see the results of this battle for the 'Luton-way' to work away for ourselves at Elland Road. Luton were supposed to be good, but does not being good mean they should be this bad? Sam Byram gave Leeds the lead after ten minutes, seizing on one of several chances home players had to take second chances in Luton's box, and although the visitors stayed within a goal of Leeds almost until half-time they looked miles away in terms of believing not just that they could get a result but that they were even there. After Leeds used a corner to get Joel Piroe a goal just before the break, Luton spent the second half milling around waiting for Leeds to score a third/their bus home, whichever came first. They were waiting a long time and ended up getting mildly interested in exploring the southern end of Elland Road, at which point Dan James came off the bench to run into the space they were now leaving to the north, scoring that third by finishing off Jayden Bogle's pass. The highlight of the last ten minutes was Luton substitute Tahith Chong charging around for his own sake, madder and madder about the Beeston crowd reminding him of his sixteen games for Manchester United. You'd think he'd be proud of it. Sixteen games! Once upon a time he played fully 36 minutes in one Premier League match, a 1-1 draw at Huddersfield. It might not make him Cameron Borthwick-Jackson, but you'd think he'd be glad anyone remembers it.
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This weekend Luton will go looking for their culture away to Farke's old team Norwich. I'm not sure they're in any fit state to find it there, in which case the people behind their 'inspiring coming of minds' had better hope home form holds up the week after when Swansea and Stoke come to town. So far their culture has been holding up there — they've only lost one of the last seven, and if the 'old-Luton way' is anywhere to be found I suspect it is at Kenilworth Road. They were harder to beat at home in the Premier League, and the quaint/decrepit old ground (delete according to your rose-tints) both charmed the Premier League and kept banter accounts in content with photos of its entrance through terraced houses. To older heads, Kenilworth Road still retains the legend of its plastic pitch like a ley line — you can't see it, but you feel like it could summon up Mick Harford in a Bedford van at any moment. So, naturally, the same inspiring minds who feel the club's culture is under attack from within have just put in their planning application for a new stadium at 'Power Court', that will 'increase the club’s chances of reaching and remaining in the Premier League' but has a name like a five-a-side centre. Perhaps this is unavoidable given Kenilworth Road's particular, ah, 'charms', and even desirable — Luton, the Town and the town, have been trying to get something new built for a long time. But leaving Kenilworth Road, when it's the one thing holding the team's form together and such a vital part of their identity, feels like a bigger risk than having some players sulking on long trips because they didn't get transfers. As Leeds discovered when they sacked Marcelo Bielsa, football is better when your club stands for something more than winning. Luton will need a better idea for coping with their coming cultural change than hiring Jesse Marsch was. And Leeds, when the bulldozers move in on the West Stand, will need a careful mind for Elland Road's culture, too.
The good news is that, while this match didn't do much to dissuade the fun-police that monitor every backwards pass of Daniel Farke's Leeds team — too easy to be tense, the game was best appreciated like one of those slow-TV channels of steam trains on scenic railways — the contrast with Luton illuminated something about a good job well done, for the second summer running, of making sure that ain't us. The boredom of winning is an achievement when the easy alternative from the last two summers was chaos. "I know after relegation it's never easy for a club, there is a hangover," Farke said last season. "You're getting used to having disappointing results, there is always question mark especially in the first window." Luton are finding all this out now. Leeds? The first transfer window was carnage. But the team was soon winning like anything.
I won't dwell on this because the slow start became a cliché last season and, ultimately, held Leeds down. Leicester were always ahead of us, coping even better with relegation than Leeds, although that felt as much to do with good lawyers as good management. But while losing the play-off final to Southampton was entirely Farke and his team's own fault, the revival since is down to him too. What 49ers Enterprises predicted would be a strong, controlled transfer window was — no matter what they say — not. Unrealistic fantasies took players away to West Ham, Brighton, Spurs and Rennes, or maybe the fantasy was that they'd stay. Disappointed players had to summon up interest in another 46 game slog. And yet, watching them this season, you'd never think this team was sobbing at Wembley in May. Farke is two for two with his hangover cures, and even managed to sneak Max Wöber onto the pitch at Elland Road amid only mild boos.
Farke was brought in as a promotion expert, after two Championship titles with Norwich, but his more significant transferable skills so far might have come from relegating them. The Leeds job was, "exactly what I would have expected because I was in this situation before," he said last season. It's hard to understand because he doesn't show much of this side of himself to the fans, but however he's done things behind the scenes, Farke has managed to keep his players away from the sort of sullen apathy that is dragging Luton back towards League One.
As well as Max Wöber, Farke has also managed to make the concept of Brenden Aaronson in a Leeds shirt feel normal, and he was some of the most fun I had at this game. In a five minute spell midway through the first half, Aaronson got himself into some great positions and made some terrible decisions. Brenden often seems to play as if he's regretting everything. Not just leaving Salzburg for Leeds in the first place (although he can't say I didn't warn him), or the whole 'yes, Berlin sounds good please, oh no I've upset grandpa' episode of last season. But also, the last thought he had. Put through into the penalty area, if he'd shot he would have scored, but he tried passing to Wilf Gnonto and then wandered around looking upset with himself. Next time he had the ball, 25 yards out, he shot the shooting he shoulda shot the last time, and gave the goalie an easy save. Then, breaking down the wing into an empty half, he had a great chance to swerve a pass into the centre, but he just didn't do anything really, and got tackled. The next chance he got to cross, he made sure he took it, and overhit the thing. Sometimes it's like watching that Two Ronnies Mastermind sketch where Ronnie Corbett is answering the question before last. Aaronson's desperation to make good has him chasing his losses, when he needs to draw a line, forget about it, and start again.
Or do what Max Wöber was doing, which I will loosely define as 'whatever', because although I know he came on for Sam Byram, he surely wasn't meant to be doing so many Byram things so much that he was verging on out-Junioring Firpo? It took about ten minutes when Max turned up to recognise he wasn't the left-back Jesse Marsch had talked him up to be, but now in the year of our Lord 2025 1) he's still here 2) I'm supposed to accept he's a wing-back. No, not having it. He almost scored with his first touch on the field but, like Aaronson missing the winner on the opening day, it seems like there are limits to comeback fairytales at Elland Road. Sam Byram, to start the game, had scored with a scissor kick, and later Bogle got a good assist, and that was plenty from the full-backs for one night. Maybe this is Farke's influence: shake off the hangover, but don't go dancing on tables. ⭑彡