Stoke City 0-2 Leeds United: All tomorrow's parties
The silhouetted Leeds players celebrating were more substantial than the shadows of their Elland Road editions who have been darkening trips away.
Here was a good example of Daniel Farke's Leeds United stretching expectations to breaking point then inverting to, this time at least, victory. With the Championship's preferred goalie in the opposite end, Yorkshire's most maligned Illan Meslier made a good save to keep a clean sheet. Perhaps it helped that he couldn't see his opposite number through the fog. As the mist swirled, Farke gave in to repeating last season's temptation to fiddle around with his midfield and find out, but where giving Ilia Gruev a go last year went wrong, bringing Ethan Ampadu back went, as Farke had said it might the other week, right. It also gave Ao Tanaka some of the time off at Christmas he was used to in Germany. The same argument could have been used to give Brenden Aaronson some happy memories of winter breaks in Salzburg and Berlin, but while patience was thin with him and Joel Piroe, Farke played them both and got an assist from the first and two goals from the latter.
The solution to Leeds United's poor away form might be Ampadu, or it might all be in the mind. Or in the effort and application. It's hard to read body language through thick fog but the silhouetted Leeds players celebrating the second goal and the win at the end were more substantial than the shadows of their Elland Road editions who have been darkening trips away. It looked like the need to do better on the road had been absorbed by all, understanding that when a trip to Stoke City offers you a lay-up win, it is your responsibility to make sure that's what you take. It helped, when the second goal came just after the hour, that Stoke's players had just started looking interested in the game, as if Tommy Cannon's idea that he could get away with late fouls while shrouded in fog was giving his teammates ideas about fighting back. Leeds knew, when Piroe nodded in Dan James' cross, that their night's troubles were over.
There weren't many problems for Leeds, not that could be discerned through the roke, anyway. After about a quarter of an hour Leeds got into a rhythm of possession that was bound to create chances. The first big one was a sweeping move from penalty area to penalty area, from Ampadu's bold pass across the pitch to Bogle, to Dan James' well-flighted cross, to Manor Solomon at the back post, who kneed the ball wide. No problem. With his Premier League socks with the holes, Solomon got into his own groove of beating defenders while they lined up to foul him two by two, and Leeds kept not just ticking but zipping, as if the simplest way of seeing the ball through the fret was moving it faster and faster. The score could have been better than 2-0, but given recent away form, Piroe's brace and a clean sheet will more than do.
It shouldn't have been so easy. Boxing Day threatened United with one of the Stokiest nights Stoke could summon up, replacing the cliched wet cold wind with thick menacing mist. It's hard to imagine how this part of the world ever justified one football club, let alone two, but the second is easy to explain: Burslem Port Vale prospered by lobbying behind the scenes with the Football League and Football Association to ensure Leeds City were thrown out of Division Two in 1919 and their club not only took City's place but their playing record for the season so far. That vulture operation has continued to blight the competition ever since.
Stoke City, meanwhile, weather permitting, should be among the biggest and most successful Premier League teams, instead of meandering around the bottom of the Championship with Carlos Corberan's cast-off mate in charge. Their manager, Narcís Pèlach, once spent a few months managing a post-Bielsa Samu Saiz at Girona but he doesn't have anyone of that talent to work with now. Stoke's owners, aka Bet365, look bizarrely incompetent compared to their gambling peers like Matthew Benham at Brentford and Tony Bloom at Brighton, who are data-scientifically redefining how to run a football club. Perhaps this proves that while the Coates clan can claim their wealth is due to their algorithmic competence, actually any old idiot can make millions from a betting website if they buy the domain name early enough and market it relentlessly. Perhaps this is why Benham and Bloom turned to running football clubs, to prove that their mathematical skillsets can succeed in more complex environments. The nearest Stoke have come to an analytic edge during the Coates' stewardship, meanwhile, has been giving Tony Pulis a measuring-wheel for Rory Delap's long throws while letting the weather make their club a meme.
It doesn't have to be this way and Stoke's current squad has some glimmers of a strategy, if the club cares to go for it. Their big chance in the second minute, when Leeds were starting slowly like they always do away and trying to get used to Ampadu being where Tanaka has been, was saved by Meslier from Lewis Koumas. Koumas, on loan from Liverpool, is the teenage son of Wigan-in-the-Prem's Jason Koumas. In midfield they had seventeen-year-old Sol Sidibé, from their own youth system, and the loins of their own Premier League legend Mamady Sidibé. There's an exception available to prove this developing rule, and it's Rory Delap's son Liam, who they had on loan but is now banging the goals in (sort of) for Ipswich Town.
Stoke have for years been the retirement home of choice for former Manchester x2, Liverpool, Everton and elsewhere footballers who still fancy a game but don't want to leave their gated Cheshire mansions. If they haven't spotted the trend around players like Erling Haaland and Archie Gray then Stoke City need to get on board before Wrexham re-market themselves as 'upon-M6' and hoover up every nepo baby in the north-west, because this is the big opportunity to establish Stoke at the top of football. They've been a late career home for everyone from Peter Crouch to Michael Owen, Charlie Adam to Stephen Ireland, Glen Johnson to Ed de Goey, Phil Jagielka to Dave Hockaday, John Obi Mikel to Shay Given. They don't need to have been great footballers in their own right. Add the Alfie to Erling multiplier, or the Andrew to Archie Gray, and there's potentially some serious talent available locally. Does 1996 Stoke City player of the year Ray Wallace have any sons? Does Carl Dickinson? They don't have to have played for the club, either. Any child being raised on the Cheshire plain is being raised within a couple of motorway junctions of Stoke's training ground, and they can't all play for Salford City. Stoke, with a big comfortable stadium, need to make themselves the nepo baby club of choice for former-footballer parents who want a nice afternoon out watching their wildly rich children play and an easy ride home in the Range Rover afterwards.
Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman
Click this link to read something I wrote last season about nepo babies coming to football, hot with a trend piece as always
Leeds United, meanwhile, need to be getting similar arrangements in place with the best of Bielsa's Harrogate dwellers before their offspring are all lost in the Middlesbrough smog. And, this season — to bring this back to relevance — they need to keep feeding fake criticisms from Chris Wilder to Jayden Bogle, or whatever they're doing to inspire his charges upfield in and out of possession. A quirk of Farke's football is that, to form his front six, he depends on creativity and influence from his full-backs. I raised a possible vindication of Jesse Marsch after the Oxford game, and here if Jesse wants it is a valid reason for playing Raphinha at right-back. Instead we've got Bogle. While Sam Byram has been doing his best in Junior Firpo's absence at left-back, old young Sam looks better on the end of things, whereas Bogle is looking happier by the game about arriving on the edge of the penalty area with the ball and a job to do of making things happen. These moments are small arguments against the need for a strict no.10 in this team, as often it's a full-back on the ball in the pockets between the lines, and Bogle did a good job for the second goal of sending James with a pass he could loft over the goalie to Piroe at the back post.
Another small argument was Aaronson for the first goal, putting Piroe through one-on-one and watching aghast as that chance was fluffed. Piroe tried to go around Viktor Johansson and not only couldn't manage it, but he trod on the goalie's arm in the process. Joel's not the type to be flustered by other people's bruises or his own mistakes, though. "I saw they left the short corner open so I thought, 'This is not a chance I’m going to miss'," he said afterwards, referring to the big gap at the near post when the ball came back to him. "So I had to take it," he continued, referring to the way he lashed the ball into the roof of the net not caring if Johansson lived or died. Perhaps he's heard that Jack Butland has a son now. ⭑彡