Leeds United 4-0 Oxford United: How good does this need to be?
This is the thing about 'needing' an exciting playmaker — it may not be necessary. Leeds should be getting promoted anyway with our frantic curly haired one who just wants to be liked.
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If the spirit of Christmas had been present in Beeston on Saturday then after taking the lead in the opening ten minutes Leeds United might have offered handshakes to their visitors from Oxford, taken them into the West Stand for some eggnog, and helped pack them on their coach back down south.
It's a long way to Oxford when you're shit, and a quick journey back to League One when you came up from 5th place through the play-offs. I don't think this is healthy in a good-of-the-game sense. The Championship, as the Premier League's perpetually bewildered sibling, tends to take on its worst traits like old hand-me-downs and now, just as Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth and Aston Villa are upending the top tier, the Champo is going all-in on the stratification that made that competition so uncompetitive for so long. That said, Portsmouth and Derby, who both finished fifteen points or more ahead of Oxford United last season, are giving staying up a decent go — despite how Derby looked against Leeds — while the division retains its one wildcard for relegation, in that clubs are still enthusiastically employing Wayne Rooney and Frank Lampard Junior.
At Elland Road, Oxford's players were supposed to be putting on a show not for their fans, or their interim manager and Warnockian disciple Craig Short (they were together at Scarborough, Notts County and, twelve years later, Sheffield United). "I said to them before the game," Short said after the game, "that this was a chance to impress the manager with your footballing ability and a chance to prove how resilient you are." That made goalkeeper Jamie Cumming's day look even worse, as after being freed this summer from Chelsea's academy — he's had five loans, he's 25 years old — he was trapped in Beeston by mother nature who, recognising how easy Leeds are having it at home, tried to even things up with a gale only for the wind to blow every ball back in Cumming's face. Even in the second half, with the wind in his favour, Cumming was still shanking his clearances out of play. All this, with his new boss watching. And all Leeds' four goals going past Cumming despite him making some decent saves that stopped it being eight.
Oxford's other visible tactics were having centre-forward Mark Harris kick Ao Tanaka until he got yellow carded, whacked by his Welsh international teammate Joe Rodon when he tried some fancy football, and put back in his place. Kyle Edwards came on as a sub and ran faster than Sam Byram, so, well done to him. And as a team they became so bewildered when once they had some sustained possession that they started kicking the ball frantically to each other amid increasing panic until one of them put it out for a throw-in and they all breathed a sigh of relief, the only people in freezing Beeston who did not want a hot potato. In the second half they started just kicking the ball to Leeds without bothering about the possession first, as if they were trying to get the worst of the pain over with. Leeds obliged them with goals three and four.
Including goal one this game was actually a decent advert for Jesse Marsch's infamous RB-sozzled notion that, if you can't see a good forward pass, you should give the ball to the other team, tackle them on the counter-press and score while they're unbalanced. Marsch also once said he wished Leeds had been relegated in his first season as this would have been easier to teach in the Championship and, well, yep. Dan James gave the ball away while trying to create around Oxford's box and the Us broke giddily upfield, only stopped by a three-player block in front of Illan Meslier's goal. Then Manor Solomon counter-attacked from deep, got the ball back from Joel Piroe, rode two challenges and rolled the ball across the six yard box for James' to slide in and score. James was all alone where seconds before the pitch had been congested with defenders, finishing like the striker Marcelo Bielsa was convinced he could be. Maybe this was a day for old ghosts proving points.
If so, that brings us neatly to Brenden Aaronson. This wasn't all his day, as for the second successive weekend Solomon was playing like since getting fit he has gone to stage two by remembering that he's supposed to be good. He was pulling off some sublime tricks of close control, putting Aaronson through for the 3-0 goal, scoring himself by hammering the ball inside Cumming's near post for 4-0 — as at Preston, he was making things happen as much through determination as skill. But we expect to get that from Solomon when he's reminded of his quality, whereas according to Daniel Farke, Brenden Aaronson was being reminded at half-time to keep his head over the ball when he shoots to stop it going, like it did several times in the first half, over the bar. That's something kids know, isn't it? Not a trick to be revealing to a professional footballer at half-time in a Championship match. 'Brenden, has anyone ever told you..?' 'Jeez, wow, no, that's a new one, that's great, hey lemme out there I wanna try it!'
Bless him. In the second half he put on a great assist for Jayden Bogle, a clever swivel and lay-off at speed — Aaronson does everything at speed — in the confines of Oxford's penalty area. Bogle gets big points for his finish, too, snapping the ball across the keeper, something he can Snapchat to Chris Wilder later. Then when the ball was booted to Solomon and he put Aaronson through, all the composure of his goal against Portsmouth on the opening day was there — rather than the miss — and, yes, a firm and secure finish into the bottom of the goal. A goal and an assist and, he told the YEP later, Christmas at home alone.
"I have no one here at the moment, which is not the best," he said. "I would like to be home in America with my family and stuff like that, but, you know, that's the job. That's what I came over here to do." Which isn't strictly true, or he wouldn't have run off last summer at the first hint of footie in the Champo to Berlin and the Champions League, not forgetting the Bundesliga winter break and Christmas in New Jersey. But this year he is going to make the best of it. "I'm not much of a cook — so it'll be interesting if I do try to cook — I probably won't to be honest. But it'll just be me, myself and I."
Which is a not very Christmassy economic reality of football, because for all the talk of putting wrongs right Aaronson is here on his bill because three years ago Victor Orta thought he'd be perfect for the worst football you can imagine and Profit and Sustainability Rules mean he's impossible to sell. So when fans wonder why Leeds haven't broken the bank for a creative no.10 who could break down the Oxfords and Derbys with one graceful swivel the answer is, in part, because Aaronson is already here and we have to do something with him. That's sort of frustrating. But also we beat Oxford 4-0 anyway with a lot of Aaronson's help and it could easily have been 8-0 so the only frustration, in the end, is imaginary.
It's frustration about what might have been on Saturday and other days. That if only Leeds were less bothered about finances and the pressure of getting promoted — which is also about finances — they could just sign, to use a random example who also happens to be a plausible loan target, Emi Buendia and go full Globetrotters through the Championship. Less graft more joy. Dismiss the 4-0s and go for double figures every time. Even in a gale the games in Beeston are being won too easily, so give us a player who will try to do more difficult things that visiting teams will find even harder to live with.
That's what it feels like a Buendia-a-like could do, teaming up with Solomon and James in their brilliant form, demolishing teams while Wilf Gnonto stands around smiling through his confusion. Starting Gnonto on the bench on Saturday, then bringing him on to play at no.10 with Tanaka and Ethan Ampadu completing midfield like a hint of 2025's team to come, felt like Farke reasserting that this season's plan is to share the starts, the goals and the assists around, not to rely on one or two wonderplayers who will leave in the summer anyway. Which is why even if Buendia or Lionel Messi or Samu Saiz do arrive, the games will probably still be the same, not because of Farke's tactics as such but because of the paranoia that has teams coming to Elland Road in a panic about how many they might concede — "You fear it could go two or three very early on," said Short, "35,000 supporters here expecting us to be rolled over three or four, which, in the end, did happen" — and Leeds fretting in case a mistake lets visitors score on the break. Which is all to do with the money Oxford will lose back in League One, and with the money Leeds will or won't get from promotion to the Premier League. And it's only Premier League income that will make selling Aaronson make sense so, right now, we need him to keep his head literally down and his shots and assists goalbound.
Which, to remind everyone, Aaronson is doing, and Leeds United are doing consistently — at Elland Road, anyway. It might never be ninety minutes of trickshots but it is attack against defence, 23 shots to six, nine on target to none, four goals to nil. Not bad for a team with a lonesome no.10 who made one clever goal and scored another.
This is the thing about 'needing' an exciting playmaker — it may not be necessary. Leeds should be getting promoted anyway with our frantic curly haired one who just wants to be liked. The question then becomes about necessity versus ornament, and whether Daniel Farke is content just to win the league or wants to win the fans' hearts, minds and memories as well. Perhaps in some way he recognises that so many Yorkshire souls are still so swollen with love for Bielsa that it would almost be an insult to the great manager to try taking his place with another great Championship team. A decent one will do, and then the class of 2020 can come back for the celebration that's still overdue. In that sense winning promotion, but not better than Bielsa did, would be a humble gesture and appropriate to the generosity of the season.
And by season I mean Christmas, not 2024/25. Happy Christmas! Give Tiny Tim a turkey as big as he is, and if he helps us beat Stoke and Derby, send Brenden Aaronson a Guinness-glazed goose! ⭑彡