Middlesbrough 0-1 Leeds United: Iron works, with Darlow, Bamford and Schmidt
There's still plenty of time for Leeds to throw this season away, but this is also the time for them to gather their resources, review what and who works under pressure, and just bang it long to Bamford when required.
I don't know if cosmic transmission is a thing that happens in EFL Championship title races but everything is connected, by technology if not by mind waves, and everyone is tuning into each others' blight at the top of the table now. Sheffield United and Burnley kicked their games off fifteen minutes before Leeds United on Tuesday night, but Leeds United were first to score. And the last. That goal, in fact, was the first and last the top three scored in all three games. Apart from the other two Leeds put in the net.
Was news of Dan James' second minute finish transmitted to Burnley's game in Derby, to Sheffield where the Blades were hosting Millwall? Did it turn up the heat and increase the pressure on the top two, helping them become 2nd and 3rd? Was some fan at Pride Park, another at Bramall Lane, compelled to lean over the advertising hoardings and update the players on the Championship live table? Burnley fans groaning through their twelfth 0-0 draw of the season, something they thought they'd left behind in February in favour of wins, might have turned to their phones to stream some excitement from Teeside in the final minutes. Sheffield United fans, fuming in defeat to Millwall, might have got the last quarter hour from Middlesbrough on their radios as they trudged off for a greasy chip butty then turned and marched back to Bramall Lane to berate Chris Wilder some more after Middlesbrough failed to equalise. Either way, after Leeds United's vibes were bad in Luton — Ao Tanaka, Daniel Farke said, had wanted to go and thank the fans but was advised against — the turn for worse was took in Burnley and half of Sheffield. Worst, in Sheffield, where the last time the Blades lost two in a row was to Leeds then Middlesbrough back in October. They've picked a bad time to lose to Oxford United and Millwall now.
Meanwhile on Teeside, Tanaka didn't know what to do with himself so opted for a cry, exhausted. Pat Bamford, the hero of the last half an hour, was pushed forward to share three cheers with the crowd but, awkward as ever, only waved his hands for two. Farke held Largie Ramazani in a long conversation, then shared some cheers with the winger he's lately been criticising. Dan James was limping around in the background with a possibly unrepairable hamstring, so it was a good moment to repair relations with one of his stand-ins.
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That said, Isaac Schmidt made a strong case for himself. Perhaps not as a starter, but as the same clutch points-holder he was at Luton. Against Middlesbrough, holding out for a 1-0 win, Leeds did everything they didn't do to hold their lead against Swansea, while I got all the stuff I went away lamenting the lack of. This time — they did take the ball into the corners! Bamford and Schmidt doing their best to hold it up there. This time — they did hoof the ball clear! It wasn't very elegant but it did the job. This time — they did run the clock down! Karl Darlow seemed a little wary of a booking, but still wore some seconds off the ref's watch. This time — Farke did bring Josuha Guilavogui on! He didn't do much but was communicating messages that the bench had been struggling to get onto the pitch, and created a new obstacle for Middlesbrough to try to get around. And, in the end, they couldn't. Well, I mean, they could. Overall they had — Jesus Christ! — seventeen shots. But they could only get two on target.
The stats say Leeds had three shots on target but that doesn't tell the whole story. Dan James scored after just two minutes when Junior Firpo's precision through ball split the left side of Middlesbrough's defence — that's Anfernee Dijksteel and Jonny Howson to you and me — sending Manor Solomon away. His cross was low across the goal, and the rest of Boro's defence was Howson-a-like, Samuel Iling-Junior realising too late that he should be trying to stop James from finishing. James, who seemed to have been reading his own 'My Game in My Words' article from the morning's Athletic, kept trying to put that technical breakdown of his play into action, notching United's next shot on target then sending one off it, too, while Solomon and Joel Piroe milled around nearby waving copies of the part of the article about 'assists'. Piroe got the third shot on target, prodding at the goalie from very, very close range early in the second half. Also in the second half, stats don't record and history will forget but we should remember for a moment Brenden Aaronson trying to settle a penalty area scramble by scoring from a full Frank Worthington juggle over his head. Obviously he didn't come close to pulling it off but I enjoyed his ambition.
Stats also don't record and only anger will remember United's two other shots on target, and into the net, disallowed for imaginary offsides. The lino disallowing Tanaka's goal, just after half an hour when Solomon sent the ball curving to the back post and Tanaka popped it in, has a particularly vivid imagination. He also disallowed Wilf Gnonto's good goal at Coventry a couple of months ago, and Joel Piroe's against Millwall. Daniel Farke was rightly miffed afterwards that the EFL should give the flag back to this beleaguered soul, who seems to see offsides everywhere, to yet again give the benefit of his doubtful eyesight to Leeds United's opponents. The miffing was redoubled when, after the fourth official and presumably the first three had been made aware, via much jabbing of iPads and shouting, that this had been a crime, the other lino had a look at Pat Bamford beating the defence and the goalie with fifteen minutes to go and decided to rule a good goal out himself, for a laugh. I know the referees' association sends letters to Elland Road apologising for these mistakes, but is that part of why they're made? Does someone at headquarters enjoy that part of the process, of getting all the reffing lads and lasses logged into a shared Google Doc, flicking through the thesaurus for some new way of saying 'sorry'?
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Bamford deserved to have this counter attack count for something more than an apology. It's been a long time, but Podcast Pat is becoming a content machine again, and he nearly had something all-around good to tell Joe Wilkinson about. Schmidt led a charge away from United's penalty area and did what several Leeds players had struggled to by playing a good next pass into Wilf Gnonto's path, and Gnonto had that joy of joys in front of him, Bamford on the last man's shoulder. Or goal-hanging three yards behind the 'keeper, in the lino's eyes. Everything was, in fact, perfectly timed, Gnonto's pass and Bamford's run in-behind and Bamford's finish, all as if he does this every week. It doesn't happen every week, and not at a stadium where the fans booed his entrance and every touch (the Riverside, to be clear, not Elland Road), which is why — until he saw the flag — his top was definitely coming off for the celebration. Perhaps it's a good thing a stop was put to this — we all remember Bamford's wild celebrations against Brentford a few lifetimes ago knackering his hamstring again and putting him out for more months, again.
Leeds needed something to count, though, because Middlesbrough looked too good to keep a goal behind. Who the heck, I asked Wikipedia, is Hayden Hackney? A 22-year-old Boro academy product from that charming local seaside idyll, Redcar, that's who, and it says he's a deep-lying playmaker. I'll say he is. So would Tanaka and Ilia Gruev, if they'd got close enough to learn the name on his shirt. He ended up against Ethan Ampadu, who was playing defence in place of Pascal Struijk, and assumed responsibility for booting everything Boro tried into touch. Hackney had all the strings in midfield, but fortunately for Leeds he was all pull and no puppet. Big January signing Kelechi Iheanacho, on loan from Victor Orta's tattered reputation in Seville, blazed one effort high over the bar as a demonstration of what Hackney was working with. Often the midfielder tried going himself as he menaced the penalty area, and he's scored five goals this season — his best yet — after shooting both more frequently and more accurately than last year, doubling his on target percentage. Then reducing it, by banging three wide against Leeds.
One effort on target came from Hackney's through ball, behind Firpo to Delano Burgzorg, whose shot was well stopped by Darlow's chest, and that was the signal for Sam Byram to take over from Firpo, and Gnonto from Solomon. Moments later James' hamstring alarmed him, leading to two more changes, so that without meaning to Leeds had swapped almost half the team and all the attack. Y'know, just in case there wasn't enough jeopardy out there already. This game had must-win status, which was partly the team's own fault for not beating Swansea, Luton or Portsmouth the way they should have, partly just — just everything, everything that had Tanaka in joyful, exhausted tears at the end.
Even if the footballers at any of the three grounds hosting top of the Championship matches weren't dialled into latest scores elsewhere, Tanaka illustrates how there is a tightening web of communicated pressure around the players. "It's so, so difficult," for Tanaka and the other players, Farke said afterwards. "The last week, the outside world is always nervous and panicking, Ao is there with his first season in English football. It's the first time in his career there was a bit of criticism on him, for a young player like this ... He's a young man, he didn't really understand why everyone was shouting at us," after a draw at Luton that Tanaka might have thought, at full-time, was a decent point.
The pressures on players are different in 2025, but I'm not sure our ideas about them have caught up. We want our midfielders to be as tigerish and single-minded as Billy Bremner, but when Bremner's team was going for glory it was, in a sense, playing for its own ambitions. The crowd was something they only encountered once a week, when there was a game on, and as the city hadn't known much success from United before, there wasn't a heavy history with which to intimidate or belittle Bremner and the rest. The players could read outside opinions, if they wanted them, once a day in the papers. The rest of the time they were insulated at their work and leisure — confusingly, given our concepts of 'support', but blissfully, mostly left alone. How did Don Revie's players manage to play such poetic football? Well, poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility and all that, and there used to be plenty of space for footballers to get away from pressure and recollect among themselves. But who among today's players — or among today's anyone — has any fucking tranquility these days? Not Ao Tanaka.
It's a different battle for footballers now and pre-May '25 views are varying over whether this year's team are habitual bottlejobs or bravely fighting to the end. The Sunderland and Sheffield United results said brave; but failing to score at Portsmouth said not. The Swansea and Luton draws are the questionable ones, whether you think they were points thrown away or, at Luton in particular, points held when things could have got much worse. But in any case, this win at Middlesbrough suggests that what has happened in those games is not being ignored. Isaac Schmidt coming on rather than Largie Ramazani is one example, the Swiss wing-back coming out from under the shock his system got in training for and adapting to a stronger more physical league and becoming reliable, not giving things away while still getting things forward. At Middlesbrough he did everything Ramazani should have done against Swansea — smart on the counter, clever with the ball in the corner, getting back to help Bogle — and so did Leeds as a team, with Bamford a focal point and an outlet and Darlow happy to aim long kicks at him, more basic but at this stage more effective than Illan Meslier starting a short passing move towards Mateo Joseph. There's still plenty of time for Leeds to throw this season away, but this is also the time for them to gather their resources, review what and who works under pressure, and just bang it long to Bamford when required. ⭑彡