Sheffield Wednesday 0-2 Leeds United: Change Given
The other players seemed slow to join Chris Wood. Perhaps they were waiting to see if he was about to produce a bike chain from somewhere and pile into the supporters, finishing what he started on Tuesday night. He was shouting a lot, but I'm willing to assume it was all nice things.
While Fulham knocked the ball quickly from player to player around and inside the Leeds United penalty area on Tuesday night, a voice in the crowd piped up, 'That's how you do it, Leeds! That's how you play football!'
Leeds have had a lot of lessons in how to play over the last few seasons, but not heeded them. Week after week we've seen teams come to Elland Road playing football that, if not quite otherworldly in the Guardiola sense, looked a lot better than anything Leeds could manage.
I'd begun to wonder this season if it was something that had become too deeply engrained at the club. I wrote recently about the development of footballing cultures, and as I watched Leeds players getting to every ball second against QPR, as Birmingham and Fulham players darted between them at speed, I wondered if this was now ours: a culture of slothful football. Hey, wait long enough, and it might come back into fashion. We might even get Casper Sloth back.
United can't wait for that to happen, though, because there would be no one still coming to Elland Road to see it. So changes are required, which doesn't seem to bother Garry Monk. Since playing Fulham on Tuesday, Leeds have acquired two new players; only one, Liam Bridcutt, came into the side, but there were three other swaps.
Some of these were perplexing. I had looked forward to the signing of Bridcutt as a means of getting Pablo Hernandez properly involved; Monk dropped him. There seemed so little to choose between the other players exchanged — Dallas, Roofe and Phillips out, for Mowatt, Vieira and Sacko — it felt like fiddling for the sake of fiddling. Monk might not mind changes, but he also doesn't seem to have a preferred midfield in mind; perhaps fair enough, given a major part of it has only just arrived.