Portsmouth 1-0 Leeds United: Let them have their game
No matter how many chances the cosmos could give Leeds to do this game over, I suspect Pompey's strength would keep doing Leeds over every single time.
With fifteen minutes of this game left Junior Firpo tried recreating some of the magic that has made recent weeks of the history of Leeds United such a thrill. He got the ball, gave it to Largie Ramazani, got it back and forced his way towards Portsmouth's penalty area. There, a scramble happened, because nothing in this game was smooth. Joel Piroe put the ball into the box and Firpo was on it again, shooting, but not strongly enough to beat Nicolas Schmid in goal. So that didn't work but Firpo wasn't finished: from the corner, the ball was crossed in and he headed powerfully towards goal, beating Schmid this time, but not beating the bar. Dan James tried to tower, tried to put in the rebound, but he headed the ball wide.
What happens to Leeds United when the magic isn't happening? They lose 1-0 in Portsmouth, losing the advantage they'd built up over Sheffield United at the top of the table and some of the gap to Burnley. And they lost it on Sunday because it wasn't only Firpo whose magic failed him, but others' too. Magic might be too strong a word when it's Joel Piroe, though. When it's Piroe, or any striker, that's about competence.
High competence, sure. Piroe is in a difficult position as the best striker in the Championship, which he is by definition, by being top scorer in it. At this level, Leeds can not have a better centre-forward than Joel Piroe, either who they could afford or who would play in this division. But by definition, as a team trying to get promoted to the Premier League, there are times when Leeds need Piroe to be better. And there are no circumstances in which Leeds can afford him to miss two chances like he missed in Portsmouth.
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The first dropped to him after Manor Solomon made some space on the edge of the box for a shot, and Schmid parried that into the six yard box where Piroe was waiting, onside, for the rebound. He hit the ball towards goal but it seemed to come off the back of his heel and while Schmid was praised for blocking it, Piroe had knocked it straight to him. The second, after half-time, was simpler. From a classic Solomon cut-back, after he'd gone around the keeper, Piroe blasted the ball over an empty goal from close range. Maybe he could miss one of these, but not both, and not the second after missing the first, and after the second Piroe was demonstrably furious with himself. There's nobody else to blame when you're the top scorer in the Championship, the hot-shot no.9 for the 1st placed team, when you've missed two golden opportunities in two six yard boxes.
Also Leeds can't be too angry with him because we can't replace him and too much anger now would be counter-productive. That's part of the frustration of losing to Pompey at this stage of the season. It's too late to fix and too late to change anything and the only way of solving it would be waking up again, much too early for a noon kick-off on Sunday, and trying to play the match again from the start. Leeds, first time around, never got going, only managing a faint imitation of a normal Leeds performance, like one of those rehearsals when everyone walks slowly through what they're going to do, full speed, when the curtain goes up for real. Part of the fun of football is how when you take those rehearsals onto the stage there are eleven people in a different uniform all trying to kick you out of doing it right and, no matter how many chances the cosmos could give Leeds to do this game over, I suspect Pompey's strength would keep doing Leeds over every single time. Perhaps United don't need a replay of the match to fix this result, they need an alternate reality in which Ethan Ampadu's knee is fixed and he's in the team to stop the midfield getting bullied. Daniel Farke picked Ilia Gruev to add strength, instead of Joe Rothwell, but he couldn't tackle anyone. Ao Tanaka, like Piroe, was not the player we need him to be. Nobody was. Nobody played well.
A little extra concern came from how Leeds didn't only not play well in their usual style of dominating possession but not creating good enough chances to score. There was a bit of that, Leeds' best move getting Tanaka to the edge of the box where he kicked off a chain reaction of players passing up shots for fear of blocks when he might have kicked the ball at the goal to see what happened. But while I expected that pattern after Portsmouth took the lead, for their energetic commitment to pressing high up to become energetic commitment to defending their penalty area, instead they kept attacking and Josh Murphy hit a good shot off the post. Portsmouth were making it a physical match in every area and while it was fair for Leeds not to want to fight on those terms, they needed a better idea if they were going to get something out of the game. They just didn't really look up for it until the end, and at the end Joe Rothwell was taking the game-saving set-pieces that so recently caused such manic delight and pinging them against the nearest Portsmouth player by mistake. At some point United's failure to score crossed over into Schmid becoming unstoppable, and he threw all his determination to keep a clean sheet and win the game at Sam Byram's stoppage time header.
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Portsmouth manager John Mousinho called it "ecstacy", their best performance of the season. "I will take the ecstasy of today and how well the boys have played and how brilliant it was to be here at Fratton Park — and certainly in the moment it feels like a massive win and it was a brilliant, brilliant day." Well good for him and good for them. They were the better team.
I don't know what Farke can do about his team when it's looking this far from the ecstasy we want in May. He also couldn't do anything about the referee, Robert Jones, not giving a penalty for a swiping boot that instead of clearing the ball cleared Dan James' leg; and not giving a yellow card to Connor Ogilvie for charging through a late foul on Illan Meslier. The manager was keeping his story simple after the game. "Why should there be an implosion?" he said. "To create this amount of chances, it's just simply to put them to bed. I would panic a little bit if Joel Piroe and Junior Firpo have not proved they can score out of these situations. If our defensive players would have allowed more often a goal like this I would panic a little bit."
The repetitive lowlight was, of course, the allowed goal, and the spotlight it shone on Meslier. It's possible he didn't deserve it this time, though. Portsmouth sent a straight ball long downfield and Pascal Struijk let Colby Bishop run off his marking and behind Joe Rodon, who didn't see him until he was running through alone towards Meslier. Rodon came trailing after Bishop like a religious protestor, waving his arms and shouting, already blaming God and Meslier for not being there even before Bishop had jabbed the ball past him into the far corner of the net. Should Meslier have been there, or at least out of his goal sooner? Sure, but Rodon should have heard from Struijk about the danger of Bishop running past him before it even got to a one-on-one in the first place, or been alert to the danger himself instead of assuming Struijk had the striker, assuming Meslier was in the space.
Meslier, too, has the disadvantage of trying to predict Rodon's behaviour. A short while before the goal, Rodon had charged upfield with the ball at his feet, played a ridiculous pass into the other half to the red-stocking feet of Pompey, then charged back into his own six yard box after Firpo had blocked a shot to head the follow-up clear as Pompey threatened to score. That wasn't a mistaken reaction to a dangerous moment, it was a sustained half-minute of stupidity that, in the end, Rodon seemed to think was everyone else's fault. I love Big Joe's maverick ways, but I'm not surprised when Meslier's characteristic indecisiveness is raised to the level of incident by the whirlwind of emotions in front of him. They're both good players. Perhaps they make each other worse.
"I just love talking on the pitch, to be honest, so I can’t help it," Rodon told BBC Leeds last week about his vocal nature — and his moaning. He added, "The boss gets on to me about this — always be positive. Sometimes, it’s quite difficult because I’m a really competitive person. I think frustration and emotion creeps into that, and I think that's the same for a lot of players. But I’m just really competitive. I don’t mean it in a negative way, it’s more of a pick-me-up and to work harder and do more."
Hopefully, once yelling at each other on the pitch after the goal is all behind them and the moods thaw on the long journey back to Leeds, Meslier will see it that way too. And hopefully Piroe will resolve to score his next two chances, and Firpo will reason that he can't be so unlucky to hit the bar again like that. And Tanaka and Gruev will take heart from not facing the big strong lads worthy of Portsmouth's naval yards again, and they'll bring Brenden Aaronson out from wherever he hid away from the EFL behemoth known as Marlon Pack. Pack epitomised what Leeds couldn't cope with in Portsmouth, playing his 597th Football League match, and stood for everything Portsmouth had on their side. They're fighting to turn the momentum of winning last season's League One by five points into Championship safety from 17th place, with a home record that now includes nine wins from their last twelve games, earned by a team with an average age of 28. They're everything about the Championship that Leeds are trying to escape, and games like this show why: because it's so hard to beat them by playing the way you want to play, it's better not to have to play them at all. ⭑彡