Leeds United 3-3 Portsmouth: Under the overwhelm

Different ideas of different seasons came and went in flashes of inches at Elland Road on Saturday. Leeds United hit the bar three times in the first seven minutes, a hat-trick approaching perfection - a shot from open play, a header from a corner and a direct free-kick - and approaching bedlam. Imagine, and it's easy if you saw it happening, all three going in, plus Pascal Struijk's penalty in the tenth minute. United would be champions already. League top scorers. There was no limit to what the final score could have been with the momentum Leeds were building up.

They were inches from a different season at the end, too, if only Brenden Aaronson had taken the easier chance to win the game with the next to last kick as well as he'd taken the harder chance to equalise, a minute or so earlier, that had made it possible to win. Whether they come by a fine margin or a wide one, everyone wants three points on the opening day. But as it ended up, Leeds got one point and a result to rue and keep rueing, until we can be sure - next May - whether it mattered or not.

There wasn't much to rue about the performance against Portsmouth, and no reason why Leeds shouldn't stay among the favourites for promotion after this. The starts of each half were dominant, optimistic and overwhelming. The three bar-strikes and goal of the opening ten minutes were not four flukes, but part of what looked like a determined effort to get the game won as early as possible.

Leeds took all of opening day's yellow-shirted anticipation and flung it at Portsmouth from every angle with Georginio Rutter as the main attacking force. He didn't do anything on the ball that was subtle, but he was changing the directions of play with an absolute force of will emboldened by his tall, strong frame, clamping his feet on the ball like a dog on a chew toy and only letting go when he could play it through or wide or whatever else he'd decided to do. One time when he did float through his playmaking was off the ball, leading to the first shot against the bar, when he spotted from deep that a gap was opening in Portsmouth's defence, pointed it out to Jayden Bogle, then ran to meet a well-weighted pass on the other side of their backline. From his cross Wilf Gnonto took a touch, took a shot, hit the bar.

Rutter and Gnonto were in charge of rescuing the second half too, after Leeds - and this might be a jumpscare if somehow you've not seen the result - ended the first half 2-1 down. That scoreline was sorted inside sixty seconds because Gnonto, springing out of a tackle with the ball, drove towards goal and shot and scored to make it 2-2 as if it was the easiest thing in the world for him and he was tired of not doing it. His joint aim with Georgi was to engulf Pompey again the way they had at the start of the first half, and these two fifteen minute spells accounted for half of United's ten shots on target. It felt like a throwback to the way Howard Wilkinson sent his teams out to win two league titles in three seasons, aiming to get the games won in half-an-hour so everyone could ease up and start thinking about Saturday night.

"One of the best first twenty minutes I've seen at Elland Road," Daniel Farke said afterwards. "Hit the crossbar three times, the game should be buried. You can't play that dominant over ninety minutes, or you'd win 22-0, and this never happens," he went on. Ah, but Daniel, Daniel - but Daniel does it never happen because people never try? And wouldn't it be worth a little experiment, a little trying and a bit of finding out? Leeds were at their best in this match when they needed a goal, and when they needed a goal they went and got one. And they were at their worst when, with a goal got, they turned down the dominance and forgot about trying to win 22-0.

I'll fit in here that Mateo Joseph was brilliant on his first start, notably effective outside the box where, like Rutter, his strength and determination to drag the ball upfield kept Leeds on the front foot and made chances for others. He got one big chance of his own, set up by one of Bogle's many threatening manoeuvres down the right, but his shot went over. But once Leeds had the lead some of the certainty went out of the side, Rutter and Joseph were less on the ball, passes into midfield were coming out of it in Illan Meslier's direction instead of onward to Will Norris' goal. Concentration slipped, momentum dropped, and Portsmouth, so close to being surrounded and sunk, scored two sucker punch goals.

There was no period in this game when Leeds were playing badly, but there were spells when they looked more likely to do bad things, and most of that was after going ahead. The opening goal came from Dan James frightening Pompey left-back Connor Ogilvie into fouling him, and the video highlights of this game should include extended replays of how utterly delighted Pascal Struijk looked when he scored the penalty - he was one big happy pirate. Portsmouth's equaliser came after some extended wandering by Bogle and Junior Firpo, who swapped wings after a set-piece, stayed that way as wingers while Ethan Ampadu made a three at the back, then shortly after apparently swapping back ended up together on the left. That gave Portsmouth a chance to break Rutter and James' hopeless offside trap on the right, and Elias Sørensen a too-easy shot through Meslier at the near post. There wasn't anything easy about Callum Lang's twenty yard shot through a crowd to put Pompey ahead, except perhaps the way Joe Rodon sent a clearing header straight to him; there was a hint about Big Joe in this game needing to resist the historic fate of many former Leeds loanees who never looked the same after we bought them.

There was no way Portsmouth should have got 3-2 ahead, but by the time they did a) Farke's 70th minute substitutions had halted Leeds' momentum and b) it felt fittingly comic for a match played in every weather, that United had dominated, featuring some brilliant home-team football and shots and chances galore, to be lost to a penalty in minute 92. I liked new signing Bogle going forward in this match; defending, he had a touch of Rasmus Kristensen being half an hour late to every meeting with his winger. That's how, despite his own shirt being tugged, Bogle ended up getting dragged into the penalty area with his arm around Christian Saydee's neck.

If only Leeds had won it from there. Let's not ignore, though, the nobility of the attempt, a resurrection of the old Bielsista spirit when going behind in stoppage time never felt like a barrier to three points. Brenden Aaronson was the equalising hero, the least he has to be if he's to restore his reputation in Beeston. After some unhelpful contributions in his return from the bench, he gathered some forgiveness by waggling his feet into a shooting position in the D and making it 3-3 with a crisp low shot. Then he found out how many heroics are too much heroics, when he took Bogle's pass into the box - another reputation on the line with that assist - and with only the keeper to beat he shot wide, misusing the penultimate kick of the match.

I wonder if Brenden Aaronson will ever be allowed to be happy at Leeds. I was wrong to say he only had the goalkeeper to beat, with that chance: he was up against his own Leeds career, too, and his decision to go to Berlin, and his physique, and all the interviews, and everything else he's up against this year either because he's heeding his grandpa's advice to put right the wrongs of his past, or because it doesn't make Profit & Sustainability sense for Leeds to sell him. And this is what it all comes down to, whatever his reapplication in training, however much diligent strength work, no matter how many times he visualises success. Just score, you wazzock.

It feels like the whole club is up against itself at the moment, not helped by starting this season with a home draw, same as last year, when everything that happened since that late-snatching of a 2-2 with Cardiff was supposed to make starting that way a thing of the past. But it could be, should be, a thing of the past, and that's what's worse. 22-0 might never happen, according to Farke, but he's got a team that looks like it could make it happen if it wanted to, and looks like it wants to. Even if all it got this time was a draw, Leeds have to keep Rutter in this condition, wilful as well as skilful; let Gnonto boss games around and score when he wants; keep Joseph in the starting line-up and let the three of them, with Dan James' pace and Bogle's crossing, overwhelm all the teams in this division that are there to be overwhelmed. Half of 22-0 would do, even a quarter of it, or just keeping it as an aim in mind, a source of confidence, a ceiling high above every other club. Realism gets used to mean dour, joyless, school-of-Allardyce things. Leeds winning 22-0 is realistic, so let's try being that real. ⭑彡