Sheffield Wednesday 0-0 Leeds United: Steel
We've been preoccupied with sexy this season. And a point in Sheffield ain't that.
We've been preoccupied with sexy this season. And a point in Sheffield ain't that.
Once I would have been yearning for the final whistle so I could quit morose observance of such a drab winter's scoreline, leaving the Hull fans in the away end curling their hands in the air like children, opening and closing their gobs like fish, singing about cats like fucking idiots.
Bielsa doesn't bring happiness. Bielsa brings principles and duty, and faith that the effort of adhering to them will result in happiness in the end, and the understanding that it probably won't.
While Reach's speculative strike had the satisfying audacity of a stunt, Klich made something artful, deliberate and beautiful. It's the difference between watching two magpies have a fight in your garden, or watching a nature documentary narrated by David Attenborough.
The lingering impression from seeing Bielsa take on Pulis was not that one style of football works better than another; neither is going to suddenly change their minds now, anyway.
Waiting for the ball to cross the line was agony, waiting for Christiansen to turn results around was agony, trudging to a half-empty football ground season after season has been agony. Ecstasy was always there somewhere, though.
All the complaints — the coach should be sacked, the Director of Football should be thrown down a well, all the new players should be returned with our statutory rights unaffected, Radrizzani should shove his PR stunts until he's bought proper players — faded away.
Midweek on the playing fields, The Championship thwacks you on the knees, it knees you in the groin, it elbows in the face, leaves bruises bigger than dinner plates.
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.
Perhaps one day putting my money into the club and into the hands of a Leeds fan won't feel like completely opposite things, which is a lot of what this pre-match protest was about.