Leeds United 3-0 Sheffield Wednesday: Grinding down a groove
All this hard work and nothing more than a single point of comfort at the top of the table: that's football at its reassuring, familiar, painful best.
For a while there was a marketing trend about promoting products as 'reassuring' rather than innovative or exciting: think, it does exactly what it says on the tin. I wonder if this might be due a comeback in this freshly uncertain age of AI and algorithms, to give people some comforting familiarity back, even with things they never really enjoyed. Think, it were miserable then but we were happy.
I was feeling something like that at Elland Road as Leeds United got back to their extraordinarily ordinary habit of winning, very simply, 2-0 at home. They even added a third goal just to make it even more '2-0 at home' than it already was, and if the maths don't work on that you'll just have to trust me on the vibes.
Back before Christmas Leeds were doing this all the time, winning nine of eleven in Beeston by two goals or more, four 2-0 wins among them, three 3-0s that felt like 2-0s too. Then they got carried away with a 4-0 win over Oxford United, flipped the form into two comfortable away wins after Christmas, flummoxed themselves by drawing 1-1 at home with Blackburn, went mad in Hull, and had to play in the FA Cup. It's 2025 now, and nearly February, when if you're like me the year will properly start. A full month since the Oxford game. Beating Sheffield Wednesday on this frosty Sunday lunchtime was a reassuring return to the good old bad old days when all we had to argue about was whether winning was boring. Think, it was not miserable and we weren't happy.
Wednesday nearly chucked another game straight into the void by conceding after three minutes. Joe Rothwell pointed a pass from deep right at the goalkeeper, James Beadle, who was tested by Brenden Aaronson stomping at him full of Red Bull and pressing. Beadle failed the test and Manor Solomon passed, between two defenders on the line, for a calm 1-0 to set up a soothing afternoon.
Based on the build up to the game, Leeds needed that. We knew Pascal Struijk would not be playing, betrayed by his hamstring at a crucial time. We knew that Illan Meslier would be playing, as manager Daniel Farke chose loyalty over Karl Darlow. We flinched when, a few minutes after Leeds scored, Michael Ihiekwe flicked a corner on with his fist and while Meslier, Sam Byram, Ethan Ampadu and Joel Piroe all waved their fists at the referee Josh Windass got on with trying to shoot through Ao Tanaka's block. Handball or not, the crowd in Elland Road did not appreciate seeing Leeds struggling to handle a corner, again.
Some of the set-piece defending felt like it was coming out of a gap where the plans have fallen between the goalkeeper, his coach, the defenders and the manager. Who, exactly, is supposed to be doing what? Piroe and Byram were at the front post trying to stop the flick-on, but Meslier was coming there anyway, ultimately challenging Ampadu for the ball. Who is in charge here? Probably Pascal Struijk, but he isn't around. Joe Rodon? Lovely fella, lovely player, but with the expression of someone you don't want to risk distressing further with responsibilities. Farke was discussing set-pieces back in April and about how from corners for and against Leeds were "lacking a bit of height" and should "keep this a bit in mind on what we do in the transfer market," but I wonder if when it came to defensive reinforcements Leeds were restricted by Max Wöber's decision to stay and fight for his place / mope around the place complaining about his knees. If the scan on Struijk's muscles reveals a long-term problem this week, expect Farke to be asking for a big, impolite, vocal lunkhead. And hope that Old Trafford aren't offering us Harry Maguire on loan.
Ampadu is the stand-in Struijk for now and the club captain, but after the game Farke didn't sound keen on a re-run of last season's successful Ampadu and Rodon partnership, despite Ampadu being the general choice for player of the match. In some ways Ampadu was excellent, like when he made a thrilling slide tackle to stop Windass going through on Meslier. But in other ways — well, it was Ampadu who had played Windass onside in the first place, forgetting to push up after his own clearance, forgetting that part of being a defender. Leeds needed the extra thunder in defence because they didn't have Struijk stopping danger before it started. Struijk is a good balance to Joe Rodon's upfield wandering, but Ampadu's midfield-mind wasn't providing the same security, and the risks increase when you think about Byram's lack of pace to stop counters through a vacated middle. Jayden Bogle certainly does have the pace, but he also has unpredictable starting positions as he makes his regular bids at solving the no.10 position. All of which I should be very happy about, after writing last week about how some of Illan Meslier's problems stem from not having enough to do.
Maybe Leeds will confine their distracted air to this match, assuming they're not refereed by David Webb again. That corner got dangerous because Leeds were yelling at him about handball. The buildup to Windass' chance through the middle featured a pull, not given, on Manor Solomon. Wednesday got back into the game because Leeds seemed to forget the Owls were there, concentrating more on trying to work out what the referee wasn't giving. For a few minutes in the second half Webb seemed to have stopped giving fouls altogether, reminding me of a time at school when one kid, denying he'd handled, declared 'We're not playing for handball anyway!' setting off a Webb Ellisesque chain reaction that culminated in a new-to-us sport combining football, rugby, basketball and, when someone went off to find something to hit him with, rounders. I believe it's known as hurling. I know it wasn't what we were supposed to be doing.
Sheffield Wednesday's players seemed better conditioned for this crisis of control than the Peacocks, for whom life is often easy. It's not that way for the Owls, whose away following were waving placards and chanting for their owner Dejphon Chansiri to sell up after another week of his particular brand of farce. Besides the signs was the telltale, that they were wearing bad Macron shirts. After dressing Leeds United's most absurd years Macron continue to fascinate me, as their international division have been chasing Kappa through the fashion pages with, according to ESPN, 'some of the best, most imaginative, and expertly executed designs of 2024', but in the EFL they feast on Wednesday's woes like demoralising vampires, making sure the team is looking as bad as the fans are feeling.
It was up to Leeds United to add a final result worthy of the visitors' low mood, and up to Largie Ramazani. He might have benefited here from the late-sub's advantage as Manor Solomon was very good all game without finding a way to help Leeds add to his opening goal, so Ramazani knew he had to come on and be direct. Part of this was also about him taking a chance to impress, and part of it might be instinctive selfishness that is by no means a bad thing. Ramazani was showing before his injury, and showed again here, the knack Luis Sinisterra used to have of cutting through the bullshit and just scoring goals. He made it 2-0 just before the end by taking Bogle's cutback and holding off tackles until, rather than laying the ball off to safety, he found his own inch in which to turn and beat Beadle with a surprise low shot. Just before the end of stoppage time Ramazani had a big part in making it 3-0 and again it looked due to desire. He was involved in a grumpy looking discussion with his teammates about how attacking he could be at a corner, settling for hanging around the edge of the penalty area where Rodon wanted him to stop any counters. He can give a big thank you to Mateo Joseph, another sub desperate for a goal of his own, who when the corner fell towards him remembered where Ramazani was and nodded it away from goal onto his mate's left boot. Largie's volley was more daisycutter than Yeboah bar-rattler, and went on the record as an assist to Tanaka's backheel.
And for the record it was 3-0, looking like 2-0, looking like it looked before the festive period gave Leeds a shake. In harsher lights it's Leeds who keep shaking themselves and holding themselves back from letting their dominance in matches turn into dominance in the league. The runs of 2-0s and 3-0s have been punctuated by the 3-3s, a 2-2, a 4-3 (that they won), the out-of-control madnesses that have felt more alarming than the three, tight, 1-0 defeats that are the only times they've lost. It's the expanding paradox of United's season, that their games have had within them the stifling quality to nullify the top of the table and turn the rest of the season into a victory parade, but Leeds have kept things interesting in the way we don't want them to be interesting by not getting away from Sheffield United, Burnley or Sunderland. In the search for reassurance, this is too familiar, and too much like last season, but solving that depends on Leeds increasing their efficiency, becoming more consistently boring, removing jeopardy from the games, from the league, from the squad, from everything. That's what I keep hearing people crying out for in this transfer window, for guarantees, to make sure, to put things beyond doubt, as if any of that is possible in football (cf. JKA, 2020). Or even desirable. Leeds have been about as surefooted as a Championship side can be so far this season, winning thirteen of their 27 matches to nil, only losing three times. All that hard work and nothing more than a single point of comfort at the top of the table: that's football at its reassuring, familiar, painful best. ⭑彡