QPR 2-2 Leeds United: What's needed now?
The greatest factor in coming weeks is likely to be something altogether simple: the Leeds United team, whoever is on the pitch at any time, just playing well and winning.
Much of the post-match lament this weekend has been about trying to pinpoint the origins of Leeds United's troubles at Loftus Road: Marcelo Bielsa in a corridor, Felix Wiedwald in a flap, Daniel Farke's Leeds going into the play-offs (last season). I don't think this goes back far enough. Friday 21st November 1975 is a crucial date, when BBC One aired the 'Happy Release' episode of the sitcom Porridge, plotted to a denouement on the pitch at Elland Road. The accounts department at the BBC's studios in Shepherd's Bush decided that could be filmed, without loss, down Loftus Road, by putting a Leeds United AFC sign up. United's next result there was a 2-0 defeat. Leeds should have been trying to lift whatever curse Porridge had put on them at Queens Park Rangers' stadium there and then.
It was probably too late. Leeds didn't win at Loftus Road in any of their first five visits, spread over twenty years, and Don Revie had to build United's greatest ever teams to get our first and second wins there, in 1969 and 1974 — both title winning seasons, both games just 1-0. When Howard Wilkinson took his champions in waiting to QPR in March 1991, they only got a 4-1 defeat and a red card for Chris Whyte. For whatever reasons, Loftus Road has been the wrong place to look for an easy time since Leeds first went there in 1932.
That perspective also sharpens up some other parts of Leeds United's current situation. History has a way of making success feel binary, and glory — and legacy, a term I don't enjoy — feel fixed by outcomes. Looking back at the early-nineties party of Leeds raving to the First Division title in 1992 rose-tints the hard times away: 4-1 at QPR, 2-0 at Oldham, 4-0 at Manchester City. The trip to Loftus Road in 1974 was for the last game of a season that started by setting a record of 29 games without defeat. But only Liverpool's midweek defeat by Arsenal meant Leeds didn't need a result on the final day to be champions. Leeds United's greatest ever season had gone awry in February by following defeat to Second Division Bristol City in an FA Cup fifth round replay with the season's first league loss at Stoke, and Leeds only won two of the nine after that, drawing four and losing three in a row, including to Liverpool. We remember the iconography — Billy Bremner on his teammates' shoulders with the trophy, a line of misspelt Admiral tracksuits back in Leeds — and forget our best ever team having a hard time in spring.
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But football isn't fun if it's a procession and the thing to do now, as Leeds go level at the top of 2025's Championship table with Sheffield United — whose Chris Wilder is still adding the two points his team were docked for cheating — and two points ahead of 3rd place Burnley, is to remember what you loved about getting promoted before. Bournemouth 1990, Bristol Rovers 2010, unforgettable games seared in our memories precisely because Leeds couldn't end the season early and took their year's work right down the wire. 1990: two wins from eight on the way to the south coast and the Second Division title. 2010: a run returning two wins from twelve games and four defeats in a row without scoring, all put right by going a goal down and a man down to Bristol Rovers on the final day. That game, more than the Champions League nights or anything else, is still the best experience I've ever had at Elland Road, and if Simon Grayson's Leeds had been getting the results they should have, it would never have happened. I remain, if you permit me, that guy who still feels a little robbed by 2020 not only through Covid, but because promotion was sealed by an unexpected goal in someone else's game without the tension that comes when watching Leeds United trying to do something for themselves. This season might give us that moment and forgive me if I'm into it.
Winning at QPR wouldn't have got Leeds safely promoted any more or less than a draw did, and the lesson since beating Sunderland and Sheffield United is also that, game by game, twists are never conclusive until we actually have a conclusion. The concerns from this weekend's game are that the performance portends terrible things for the last eight games of the season, but it needn't, any more than beating Cardiff 7-0 portended being promoted already. All the things that were problems at QPR have solutions, and a lot of them were solved by full-time anyway, when Leeds were much more like their normal selves, leaning on a stubborn defence, trying to break through a third time after succeeding twice already.
Those two goals weren't enough for a win because one or two or eleven Leeds players were not switched on for the first half-an-hour. That's when the second was scored, Farke complaining later that his players knew there should be two guarding against an attacking throw-in and Joe Rothwell, in the moment, the player guiltily trudging too late to join Manor Solomon in applying pressure; in the middle of the penalty area, Joe Rodon can be watched grimly ball-watching as the cross comes over, concentrating on heading it clear with no idea that Steve Cook is standing idly by, ready to put a looping header on a cross that missed Rodon easily, to send it into the net.
None of that was as bad as the first goal, coming from a long throw that Leeds never properly cleared, Brenden Aaronson committing the final nonsense by intercepting a cutback before Lucas Andersen could shoot from it then laying it off with a no-look pass, like he was back on Chelsea's goalline in 2021, to create an even better chance for Koki Saito to hit the ball first time into the top corner.
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Aaronson became the focal point of the day's frustrations, getting a big cheer for going off at half-time, getting his bad points highlighted by Wilf Gnonto coming on as contrast and playing the no.10 role like people normally like the no.10 role to be played. Gnonto went side to side in space between the midfield and Joel Piroe, getting the ball and giving the ball, helping to set up the equaliser. Leeds had worked their way onto the scoreline before the break, a fifteen pass build-up before Piroe found Solomon in space down the side of the penalty area, and he crossed low for either Junior Firpo, Jayden Bogle or, as was given, an own goal to score the goal. Six minutes into the second half Bogle did score, making it 2-2, after Gnonto played the seventh pass of a move by zipping the ball on the turn inside the full-back to where Bogle and Dan James were both running. James' cross was deflected, Solomon's shot was against the goalie's feet, and Bogle was in there with a careful finish inside the unguarded post. This was a good goal and it came from what has often felt like a missing ingredient — a player thinking fast and acting soonest to unlock the potential of all the attackers up that end, wingers and full-backs and strikers alike.
It pays to be careful when talking about Brenden Aaronson, literally in my case, as earlier in the season someone let me know they'd cancelled a paid subscription to Leedsista because I'd called Aaronson, with what I thought was gentle humour and certainly in comparison to language elsewhere, a 'wazzock'. (Connoisseurs of mild and old-fashion northern English insults can cover that financial impact by clicking here to subscribe). It's actually a great word for how I feel about him, as I mentioned after Millwall — sometimes he'll pull-off a balletic assist, sometimes he'll boot the ball into his own face. It's just how he is. But never will he take us through ninety minutes of elegant playmaking artistry from his near-permanent position behind Piroe. That's just how he isn't.
Farke's idea, though, is that we don't need that there. With Aaronson, Leeds don't have a creative no.10 but they don't play like they have one, so it's fine. We who watch Leeds going about this every week might be immune to it by now, but imagine seeing it new from the other club's perspective, on grounds where it is not normal to be scoring a goal because the left-back and the right-back are rushing into the six yard box together. Farke's intention seems to be upending positional norms by overloading with players in surprising places, so it helps Firpo, for example, to be a better finisher than he is a tackler because he'll be up in the penalty area, while (when fit) Ethan Ampadu can do the defending Firpo isn't. Creatively, as Farke sees it, he has Rothwell and Ao Tanaka playmaking from deep areas towards the wings, so extra guile behind the striker is less necessary than a player, with energy to burn, who can stop the opposition from getting out once Leeds have penned them in. Like Firpo is a centre-forward disguised as a left-back, Aaronson is used like a defensive midfielder playing up the front of the pitch.
Which might, hear me out here, be of more use to Leeds in the Premier League. The fashion there is still for lots of build-up between defenders and goalies. Teams love playing in their own six yard boxes, trying to create spaces to spring into. Aaronson can lead the counter-revolution for counter-pressing to finally have its victory, and I wonder why more teams don't play a quick tackly bastard in the no.10 position to pressurise defenders into mistakes, instead of asking willowy playmakers to do doggy-runs from centre-back to centre-back and back again. Aaronson has a bit of both worlds, trained by Red Bull to counter-press for days, with enough of the Medford Messi still just about visible for him to slip a pass through now and then if he wins the ball. Equally, he might just get sold in the summer. Aaronson is emblematic of modern football in other ways because since relegation Leeds have, essentially, been waiting until they've owned him long enough to be worth selling under Profit & Sustainability rules. It's an arbitrage game of amortising Aaronson in real time, hoping he plays well enough that one day he's worth more than his initial fee less its reduction through the time remaining on his contract divided by its length. He cost £25m on a five year contract. This summer any bid over £10m will represent a small PSR profit, and be affordable for whichever Bundesliga or MLS club thinks it can handle his wages and make a proper player out of him. Bought from looking at one spreadsheet, he's been trapped here by another, and he has contributed. Not goals and assists, maybe, but while it's harder to quantify counter-attacks stopped by running fast to get in the way that doesn't mean we shouldn't give it a value.
All that's the future and the point about right now is whether Aaronson's counter-pressing is necessary when we're the best team in the EFL Championship and will be playing Swansea in a couple of weeks, the division's 16th placed team, at our place. And it is, even after Gnonto's second half at Loftus Road, a question. He was impressive, he was vibrant, he played lots of fun passes, he did a lot more on the ball than Aaronson has for weeks. But he gave away a lot of stupid free-kicks by trying to press, and Leeds went twenty second half minutes without conjuring up a shot at goal anyway until Gnonto tried one himself. Leeds, with the creative no.10 we've been crying out for, didn't create all that much. How many of the remaining matches — Luton or Middlesbrough away, Paul Heckingbottom's Preston wi' and wi'out ball at Elland Road — will leave spaces for Gnonto to weave his magic around the back four, and how many will feature some def-mid clogger detailed to kick him out of the game?
The greater factor in coming weeks is likely to be something altogether simpler: the Leeds United team, whoever is on the pitch at any time, playing well and winning. At full-time the details about individuals felt less important than the shape of the game, from 2-0 in the first half-an-hour to 2-2, when it would have been so easy to let QPR add another couple in the second half and have a 4-0, like last year. This continued a theme of this season, how when Leeds have been bad, they've avoided being as bad as last year — last season a bad day looked like losing 4-0, this time it looks like a 2-2 draw. There are fightbacks, this season, answers to pressure that weren't present last time. This week Leeds won while Sheffield United and Burnley both drew; then Leeds drew while Sheffield United and Burnley both won. And, so, it goes on, like a league should. It won't mean promotion by eight clear points in April, but what would be the fun in that? ⭑彡