Taking the time to build, and protagonism versus pragmatism

You can pick your own from the worst moments of Leeds United's first half at Bramall Lane on Monday night. Jayden Bogle was an immediate contender, hearing the first boos from his former fans turn to cheers as he shanked a pass down the line and out of play. Two minutes later, under no pressure after a drop ball, Ilia Gruev passed out for a throw-in rather than to Junior Firpo's feet. Later, Gruev got sucked towards the ball out wide, leaving Sydie Peck a free run and shot through the middle of the Leeds half. A minute after that, with his own chance to run in Sheffield United's half, Gruev tried a thirty yard left foot shoot from an angle wide on the left that went high and wide up into the stands.

A good attack by Manor Solomon and Brenden Aaronson put Dan James free in the penalty area, and he steadied himself and blasted the ball high over the bar. Another good run by Solomon set up James in the same place again, but this time he bounced the ball weakly off a defender's leg. Pascal Struijk's pass went over the offside trap, falling perfectly for Solomon, who with Joel Piroe square in front of the goalkeeper decided to cut inside and try a soft shot right at the goalie. Solomon had another chance to make something happen after Gruev intercepted a pass, but after jinking around out wide he crossed straight into keeper Michael Cooper's hands. A couple of minutes later Struijk put Solomon away again, and he shot himself again, straight at a defender. From the resulting throw-in, Aaronson bounced the ball back to Firpo, who was offside.

What a litany of trash and it doesn't even include anything the goalie was doing, which is sort of my point. And not a particularly new one, I know. Illan Meslier's mistakes on Monday — and at other times — stood out more than any of these because a) he stands there being 6ft5in and wearing his own clothes where everyone can see him b) anything he does happens close to his own goal line, where a mistake on the same low level of dumbness as being caught offside from a throw-in can mean immediately conceding an important goal c) a combination of those two things means the video and still cameras are all easily focused on him, capturing his flinch as Tyrese Campbell's header deflects off the post and in off him at excruciatingly high resolutions and frame rates. If Dan James' shot misses the goal by thirty yards we need never speak of it again. We don't even see where the ball lands. If Illan Meslier misses the ball by an inch we can and will watch it happening over and over again in slow motion, sharpening our pitchforks all the while.

This is why nobody wants to be a goalkeeper, and there's a whole shelf of literature about how the people who do want to be keepers are crazy, different, weird. But it's not just the attention. It's about playing the game by rules that don't help you control your own reputation. Meslier was kind of lucky on Monday night, not that Leeds scored three to save his blushes from the opening twenty minutes, but that Sheffield United kept giving him things to do that pushed those early errors down the timeline. A couple of good saves, a well timed dive on feet at the edge of his area, a strong catch in stoppage time while Jack Robinson bounced off him onto the ground. Meslier turned his night around, but only because things kept being done to him. Had his teammates been doing a better job in front of him it might actually have been worse for his reputation.

Which is part of what makes Meslier hard to figure out. He has to wait, often through entire games, for something to happen that he can react to. Without things happening to him, he can't do anything. Dan James made up for his early waywardness by standing up the cross for Firpo to equalise, by giving the ball back to Piroe for him to hammer in the third. Piroe could score that third by getting on the ball after Leeds were 2-1 up, no matter how he'd drifted in and out of the game earlier on. Aaronson and Gruev couldn't get into the game but they could be back on the ball at the weekend long before Meslier has to make a save. Solomon didn't sort his end product out in Sheffield but did end the game with an ice pack on his leg to show the hurt he had been under. These outfield players don't just have the advantage of less scrutiny, they have their fates at their own feet because they can go to get the ball again and to try again and make sure they do something good before their game is over. There's no similar opportunity for a goalkeeper, unless he has a word with the other team's strikers at half-time and asks them to stick some testing shots on target to make him look good.

So the question of what to do with Meslier in the Premier League next season remains constant. And yes, I know I'm skipping very merrily past twelve games of Championship football there. And the question really applies to the whole team. Since Ipswich lost to fellow strugglers Manchester United this week, the lesson from the Premier League's bottom three is that Leeds will have to get a lot better than the last promoted cohort to stay up next season. Well, better. How much better is still something I'm not sure about, which is where Meslier comes in. It's easy to look at the firepower on Match of the Day — Mo Salah, Erling Haaland, Chris Wood, yes I said Chris Wood — and fear us putting some blu-tacked together pipe cleaners up against them. But Salah has notched a goal, an assist or both in all but four of his Premier League appearances this season. When there's hardly a team in the top flight that can stop him, should the expectation be for Leeds to somehow find and afford players who can? The race for 17th will be, first of all, about stopping strikers for — say — Sheffield United, Burnley or Sunderland from scoring. This, based on recent experiences, should not be as much of a problem.