Sheffield United 1-3 Leeds United: Starting slow, finishing fast
It's not always how you start but how you end, in football, but you have to work hard to make sure the last goal is important, and yours.
One of the great things about the last two Monday nights is that the games were two good ones, living up to their top of the table billing with quality and drama. Which is the sort of thing we can only really say, grudgelessly, if our team won them both. And they did so we can.
Unfortunately we only got one view of Leeds United's big match mentality because the team went behind in both games, looking afflicted by the big occasional nerves that cost us promotion at Wembley last May. It might have been nice to see the players on the front foot, Norwich in the play-offs style, beating Sunderland and Sheffield United from minute one. Instead we got an answer to Wembley, a what-if pair of comebacks, and if you haven't imagined the hangover from that match is still a factor check the weekend's Premier League football where Georginio Rutter was celebrating his goal for Brighton with a Leeds salute against Southampton.
Leeds really leaned into their nerves at Bramall Lane, though, to the extent that their first twenty minutes against their title rivals might be their worst since the play-off final. In two ways the team have Illan Meslier to thank for the way they pulled themselves out of it. Firstly because, by trying to Lukic-at-Ibrox a corner into his own net (after punching the ball backwards it was blocked by Ilia Gruev on the line), helping Tyrese Campbell's misaimed rebound over the line himself to put Sheffield United ahead, and plonking a simple pass straight out for a throw-in that was then launched into the box for him to flap at, Meslier made himself a one-man highlight reel for all Leeds' failures so that the team got away with their crimes elsewhere — crosses not being blocked at source, runners lost, forward moves breaking down. Secondly because the rest of the team must have been wondering why Meslier was having such a torrid time and eventually they put their finger on it: because this was a big match, and only Sheffield United were playing like it. Given the occasion it was understandable for Meslier to be a bag of nerves. It was harder to understand why nobody else was.
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Sheffield United were fired up, physical, and out to get the goalie. It was clear, even before Vini Souza was waving his hand in front of Meslier's face at a corner, that their manager Chris Wilder had told them to put the pressure on the soft lad in nets. Well, it's a tactic, and in so far as they got a goal, it worked. But it depended on a few things to consistently work. It didn't account for Meslier getting himself back to his post-Hull concentration, making saves, diving at forwards' feet, getting clattered as he caught high balls and coming up stronger. It needed Leeds to keep exposing their six yard box to the Blades' advances. It needed the set-pieces to keep swinging into dangerous regions. And it required Sheffield United to keep their early rhetoric going for the full ninety minutes and more. None of those things stayed the Blades' way.
Wilder was superficially magnanimous after the game, as if he hadn't told his big lads to crash into the keeper, as if he hadn't been loving the physical side of the game, as if he hadn't been prowling around looking for Patrick flipping Bamford so he could steal the egg sandwiches from his lunchbox. What even is a quail, anyway? His post-match demeanour was the downcast, put-upon, South Yorks underdogs variety, as he explained how Sheffield United can't compete with Leeds United's expensively assembled team. That's despite the Blades having a greater share of parachute payments in their bank, despite the points deduction he won't stop whinging about being imposed for signing players they didn't pay on time for, despite bringing in seven more new players a month ago. "(We were) massively stretched over Christmas, in terms of the Burnley game, nothing in that (they lost), and the Sunderland game, nothing in that (they lost), and in terms of the selection and the players available to us," he said. "(Tonight's game) was lightning pace, energy levels from both sides were fabulous, we just ran out of gas a little bit."
What Wilder can't face up to, publicly at least, is that he doesn't seem to have any good solutions for his team's lack of gas other than signing new players to replace the ones he's flogged gasless. Nine Leeds players have played more than thirty games this season. Only five Sheffield United players have managed that. Some of their January signings were reactions to long term injuries and one of them — Harry Clarke — went off injured at half-time. Recently Gus Hamer played on with a sore hamstring against Middlesbrough, missed the trip to Luton, and was only fit enough to come on in the second half and jog about looking knackered against Leeds. Ben Brereton Diaz hasn't played a full match since August and, as his substitution approached, the contrast between him and Leeds United's fit, athletic and dedicated strikeforce was demonstrated by the equaliser.
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The fact the equaliser didn't come from a forward but from Junior Firpo is equally relevant. Even in the first half, when Leeds were struggling, Sheffield United's wide players were leaving spaces the Peacocks could, if they got their act together, exploit. The difference in application was so great that Leeds United's wide players, namely the left-back, could twice arrive late in the penalty area to attack crosses from out wide. The second time was a joy, a crashing header from Firpo that the Blades simply weren't set up to defend. With both feet off the ground, hanging high in the Sheffield sky, back straight and forehead to ball, you can cut and paste your pick of the Welsh, Gary Speed or John Charles, and call this goal their trademark. But it wasn't anybody else, it was Junior Firpo.
Leeds had, by this point, long since woken up and Wilder's substitutions were not about to change the momentum. "I think we'd have all shaken hands on a draw about 89 minutes," he said, but no, because Daniel Farke's substitutions were tilting the momentum further in Leeds United's favour. It still took until 89 minutes to get a winner, though, because the Peacocks seem delighted lately to make up for some of the last two years of dullish passing with bouts of delayed delirium. The deciding goal was another set-piece set-up from the Joe Rothwell special team. He'd taken over from another night of Ilia Gruev underwhelming and took a corner after Wilf Gnonto's shot was kept out of the top corner by Michael Cooper's fingertips. His outswinger almost found Struijk but Firpo was there first, heading down into the six yard box, where Ao Tanaka got free from Hamer and got onto the ball just as it was bouncing out of play. Tanaka brought to this crammed moment betwixt touchline and post what he brings to crowded midfields, his own time, and decided a carefully placed header beyond every defender into the far top corner was the best thing to do.
The celebrations took Leeds United's yellow shirted players into the away end, joined by the unused subs in their training tops and Ethan Ampadu in his bench coat, going as fast as he could while holding his hand on his injured right knee and deciding that the surgeon sorting out his cartilage might as well have their hands full. And the celebrations kept on going ninety seconds later, the second the clock hit 90:00, when after the crowd roared at him to shoot, Joel Piroe's twenty yard shot flew off Cooper's glove and rattled the net like a cannon ball into chainmail (please use the video below and try enjoying this goal with your eyes closed). The truth of the song 'No Piroe No Party' is that Piroe is one of the quiet ones you don't notice until, after the third or fourth glass of wine, he's taken over the karaoke machine and is dancing on a table. He'd started the move from kick-off with an up 'n' under, for a laugh, and a cool volleyed pass wide to Dan James, for the class. The finish was just belting.
Piroe played the rest of the game with a big grin on his face. Meslier put Jack Robinson on the floor. Jayden Bogle was substituted off as a final taunt to his former fans, although not many had stayed to boo him as had come with that their aim at 8pm. It's not always how you start but how you end, in football, but you have to work hard to make sure the last goal is important, and yours. Starting slow and finishing fast has been the giddy idea of the last two Mondays but it's also the sobering reminder about the rest of this season, as there are twelve games left — nearly a quarter of the campaign — and Leeds can't, simply can't, let nights like these count for nothing. ⭑彡