Leeds United 3-1 Hull City: Sometimes

“Sometimes,” Marcelo Bielsa once said, “God puts things in the right place,” ‘things’ being Kalvin Phillips, ‘the right place’ being inside Birmingham City’s penalty area to score the only goal in Leeds United’s centenary match in 2019. Phillips, bless his middle finger, is now learning about life in the wrong places: Manchester, London. Hence, I guess, ‘sometimes’, because football is only occasionally kind.

How about Daniel James in the 96th minute, on the halfway line, as far east as the Elland Road pitch allows, the ball at his feet, Hull City’s goalie nowhere to be seen? Compared to being twelve yards out with only Wojciech Szczęsny to beat, it might not feel like the rightest of places. Last week James was feeling the pressure of a country’s dreams when he tried to score a penalty to help Wales qualify for Euro 2024. This week, he was feeling the pressure of a county that could be a country’s dreams, on top of the pressure of missing that penalty. The wrong place. The right place. Sometimes. Should Dan James thank God, or thank Joe Rodon?

Arguably Leeds needed Rodon’s two defensive headers and a block more than they needed James to add a third goal, but most of all Leeds needed some relief. A stoppage time corner, Ryan Allsop up from Hull’s goal trying to equalise, Georginio Rutter trying to dribble out of the penalty area as if he hadn’t seen where that got Kalvin Phillips for West Ham on Saturday. Rodon was celebrating his block with the South Stand even before Joel Piroe was putting James into Hull’s half with a decision to make: run for the corner and safety, or go for goal risking a deflating miss and another Hull attack? The finish, from so far out, was brilliant. The celebrations said it was all worthwhile. 

Leeds United are not quite in the right place in the Championship table: somehow, Ipswich are. Second place was a fine target for this season. Being second behind Ipswich Town was never part of the equation. What Ipswich are, and how they’re doing what they’re doing, is a mystery to us in West Yorkshire, because we’ve beaten them 4-3 and 4-0 and in the abstract, statistical sense, while Leeds are close to our expected goals against (33 expected, 31 real) and for (71 expected, 75 real) Ipswich have conceded ten more than they should have and scored an extra twenty. Twenty! And they’re a mystery in the emotional sense because it feels like they’ve scored most of those twenty like they did against Southampton just before we kicked off, as the winning goal of five in the 1000th minute of sudden death added time. At this point we have to stand back and applaud, respect however the heck Ipswich are pulling this off, and assume it’s just never going to end, that they’re going to keep scoring last minute winners until they’re in the Premier League, in Europe, who even knows. Rather them, in any case, than Leicester City. They also won yesterday, in the promotion race’s first game of the day, but they still didn’t seem particularly chuffed about it. The three-way contest breaks down with Leicester: agitated, Ipswich: joyful, Leeds United: tense.

Which is why we needed that third goal. We didn’t need, on Easter Monday of all the cursed Leeds days, to be kicking off third, waiting for games to finish like it was 2019 all over again and Hull were Wigan. Five minutes before half-time Rodon and Illan Meslier were leaving a bouncing ball to each other as if trying to summon Kiko Casilla’s ghost. When a penalty was awarded in the second half it was cheered but then feared, because Leeds had a chance to re-take the lead, but first someone would have to take the actual penalty. The best thing: hope. The worst thing: hope. Junior Firpo pretended to take responsibility. Dan James wasn’t getting involved. Joel Piroe took the ball. Crysencio Summerville took over. Firpo put himself forward again. Ethan Ampadu took charge. Summerville put the ball on the spot and, after torturing his run up, put the ball into the right place – the net – and celebrated meeting destiny with his shirt off. God, Summerville, the right place. He won the penalty – Cree, not God, although maybe both – but it might have been easier for everyone if Regan Slater hadn’t fouled him on his run around the outside and in towards goal, and just let him score. 

I suppose if you believe in destiny you don’t worry about things like that, but the concern for Leeds fans is that destiny is real and it exists to fuck us over. I realise I’m working through this match backwards but it’s a sport full of hindsight, making this the right place to review the starting eleven. After Watford, Daniel Farke called everything right before kick-off: Liam Cooper dropped, Ampadu and Rodon together in defence, Firpo and Byram the full-backs and Archie Gray into midfield with Glen Kamara. Naturally, none of this went right in the sense we might have liked. Rodon hadn’t trained due to a back spasm and played with painkillers: “a shock in the morning,” Farke called it, “we were fearing that he couldn’t start.” Kamara was ill. Byram, who always plays with question marks about his fitness, confessed to Farke at half-time that he couldn’t sprint anymore and played another fifty minutes anyway. Summerville had fitness “problems”. Rutter wasn’t mentioned, but this was his second game in four days, after hernia surgery two weeks ago. Archie Gray’s problem wasn’t fitness, but inexperience next to his sickly midfield partner, plus a visiting crowd ready with ironic cheers for any of the golden boy’s missteps. 

Basically, in terms of things being in the right place, none of these people should have been playing a game of football at this time, and at times it showed. Byram scored, he says with his teeth, which are in his head so we can call it a header, after Rutter drove through the middle of the pitch as if trying to get the game won before his stitches unravelled – he beat four players, for crying out loud – then played in Summerville, whose shot was saved and span to Sam at the back post. Taking the lead after nine minutes was great news, but for the next 75 minutes Leeds were beset by bad habits. Pat Bamford was back to putting golden chances, this time a low cross into the six yard box, over the bar when he has to score. Firpo got one of his old style first half yellow cards for some clumsy, pointless foul miles from goal. Sometimes after taking the lead, Farke allows his players a bit of rest out of possession, but too often this goes how it did here, with Hull deciding possession is great and using it to equalise. Ozan Tufan found space in a Gruevless zone, while Gray and Kamara were otherwise engaged, and after Rodon ran at him there was no getting back into shape as amid blocks, missed tackles and general rushing around Hull got to the byline, Tyler Morton crossed, and Fabio Carvalho clipped it in. Leeds, without Ilia Gruev dictating, kept trying to force passes from Ampadu to the front: he complained, the forwards complained, Gray and Kamara stayed out of it. Daniel Farke, as if testing Elland Road’s patience, stuck to his anti-sub policy until he brought on Mateo Joseph after seventy minutes and Piroe long after eighty.

We didn’t need this! And in the end it was perfect. A routine 2-0 win might have been good, an awkward 2-1 was going to be fine, but the final 3-1 score, and final Dan James goal, did wonders. Leicester: agitated, Ipswich: joyful, Leeds United: tense, and the good part of all that tension is when we get much needed release. Hull were Dan James’ hometown club, where he played as a boy, and their fans arrived to tell him – “City reject! You let your country down!” In the 96th minute, on the halfway line, over to the east, the ball at his feet, the goalie nowhere to be seen. Against his former club, against their noisy fans, against Wojciech Szczęsny again, perhaps, imaginary in the otherwise empty Kop end goal. Against Poland last week Dan James knew that missing meant losing. Last night he was in the right place to do something for himself, and for us, and for his team, and there’s not much better in football than to score and know, for certain, it means winning. ⭑彡