Leeds United 5-2 Cardiff City: Well done

What a blessed relief this game was. Five goals scored, all good, one we can talk about forever and ever, the game so done after half an hour that everybody could relax and just watch the players doing the football and feel fine about things. It was a sweet sidestep away from that heavyweight foe, narrative, through a wardrobe door into football Narnia. Our favourite team playing well, winning, so we could all have fun. It's been a while.

Obviously bliss couldn't withstand the post-match press conference, when all the talk about Jesse Marsch's future and his tactics and his personality came back, because he brought it back, raising without being asked to reports about players being against him — “B.S.,” he said — and claiming again that Leeds fans don’t understand his tactics. His presser clocks in over 2,500 words, and all that talk invited the caveats about Cardiff being poor opponents with a shambolic defence — and I’ve seen ours, so I know what one looks like — and still being able to score two past Leeds, plus one close offside call.

Even when you try to escape that stuff, you can't. And Marsch shouldn't look or sound so put out about the criticism he gets, because it's not just him, or Leeds. Every English club's season is presented in the press as a battle between its manager and time. It's not so much sportswriting as narrating erosion, watching a house placed on a cliff as it slowly, inevitably tumbles into the sea, hot takes working like waves upon the rock face. They all get sacked in the end, and that's all anybody talks about until they do.

So for once, instead of us all talking about Jesse, or Jesse talking about Jesse, let's talk about me. Because I'm still feeling unusually fatigued and out of sorts since receiving a Christmas gift of Covid, and my attempts at overcoming this with fresh air and exercise have only given me a new cough. Wednesday was the day the (brilliant, please buy it) new issue of The Square Ball magazine was due for the printers, so despite not actually having a proper job I was still so busy all day with varying amounts of different stuff I didn't have time to get properly dressed until it was time to leave for the match. For that, I did my usual trick of wrapping up too warm, leaving too late and walking too fast (three miles! and three back!) and arriving in too much of a tired, haggard, woebegone state for someone in the prime of his life. Shut up laughing. Anyway, then the game kicked off and Wilf Gnonto smashed in a superbike volley after like one second and I started feeling much better about things.

I only mention all that because I doubt I'm the only one. Everyone brings their troubles to the match, or to the sofa in front of a TV showing it, and it's stupid really because how long do you normally have to wait for someone like Wilf Gnonto to smash in a superbike to make you feel better? Usually nothing like that happens at all and you end up deflated and cursing the cheerful chatterbox buffoon in the dugout. And you give it a few days of moaning about him, and all them on the pitch, then you give it another try, and it's no better.

So now, when it has happened and it was great, it's a good time to just revel in it a bit. Even if you weren't there or didn't see it live on television, it's such a good goal that your first inkling of it will tingle just the same. I'm not sure you even have to see it, ever. There's a power in the message of a goal like this, the telegraphic thrum of the wires taking it round the world or the different background tone in a pub where people are discussing it. It lets you know, by vibration alone, that something special has gone on. You know it when you walk into a room where people have just heard bad news. You know it when you walk into a room where people have just heard about Wilf Gnonto smashing in a superbike.