Leeds United 1-0 Crystal Palace: Not ground down - The Square Ball 1/12/21
DEFIANT
Written by: Moscowhite • Daniel Chapman
I have a back page clipping I’ve preserved all the way
through from November 1991, a photo of Leeds United players celebrating in
front of their fans in the away end at Villa Park. After pulling off a
complicated corner routine they’d been trying for a year, Gordon Strachan and
Gary McAllister look happier than the goalscorer, Lee Chapman, and the three of
them are swamped by teammates in golden shirts from every angle. They’re not
all there, but most of them, and David Batty is flying over the top of them.
Team goal. Team celebration. The league title was on.
Now I’m looking at Jamie Shackleton’s face while he’s
celebrating the last Leeds goal of November 2021, at Tyler Roberts, Dan James;
at Stuart Dallas punching the air and punching Raphinha in the bollocks. Kalvin
Phillips is in the thick of it, substitutes are running from all over, and all
the players, even the ones usually tagged as ‘much maligned’ or being pulled
about in manufactured controversies, are in the moment, untouchable,
impeccable, delirious.
This was all to do with Elland Road’s second vital last
minute penalty of the season, and maybe this is going to be how Leeds stay in
the Premier League, taking every home game down to a stoppage time spot kick
and taking them in turns. It was Rodrigo last time, against Wolves, celebrating
by drop-kicking a corner flag. Raphinha this time who, after the scrum subsided,
did a dance to camera that might never have ended if the referee hadn’t
insisted on playing on. Some people will tell you that a last minute 1-0 winner
like this hides sins, masks blunt edges of open play, gives a team something it
doesn’t deserve. But by god it lifts the mood, into that escapist realm we go
to football for. Why forsake that zone and rush back to reality when, speaking
for my own heart, that’s the last place I want to be? These are the moments
when football goes above itself to deliver more than a boring old three league
points or the execution of a tactical plan. Remember Manchester City winning
the FA Cup against Watford the other year, 2-0 up in the first half, 6-0 by the
end? Even their fans started getting bored of the humdrum wins at Wembley. Give
me a relegation scrap in November, a last minute penalty, a last minute winner.
Nobody remembers how City played in May 2019, nobody will remember how Leeds
played here. Leeds fans left the scene without a trophy but with much, much
pleasure.
Were Leeds lucky? I’ve bemoaned the Peacocks’ bad luck i.e.
cursed existence plenty of times, so maybe I should be reversing the view here.
But no. Andre Ayew started the first half attacking Pascal Struijk at left-back
like he was Junior Firpo (then actual Junior Firpo came on at half-time and
Ayew’s influence waned) but it was right not to give a penalty when Struijk
palmed Ayew’s back. The feeling of justice only increased with Conor
Gallagher’s protests about this and every other decision: maybe we should have
signed him, but I’m glad we didn’t sign him. Christian Benteke’s missed back
post header, a pivotal second half chance, wasn’t put wide out of luck, but
because, like Brighton’s Neal Maupay, he can’t score. His better attempt,
surprising Liam Cooper and Illan Meslier with a hidden leg on a low cross, was
kept out by phenomenal pitstop goalkeeping when Meslier obliterated the gaps
between thought and action, stopping the ball on the line. This looked like
surviving, but teams do give up chances, especially when they’re not playing
great. A weird side effect of the anxiety that envelops a team out of form is
that demands increase, as the risk factor of each tiny breach is magnified. You
can get away with worse stuff when you’re playing well. Here, Leeds just had to
get away with it, and did. The penalty given to Leeds wasn’t fortunate, it was
correct, Marc Guéhi flying at a corner with his hand over his head. Given
Crystal Palace’s poor record defending set-pieces Leeds should have taken
advantage of this stuff sooner, but the game lasts as long as the referee says,
and every second is valid until full-time. Scoring so late just feels better.
That Leeds didn’t create a great deal from open play before
the penalty doesn’t push the result into lucky realms, either. Tyler Roberts
missed an early chance when Dallas flashed a low cross in front of him, then
stuck himself into a performance suggesting he’s learned from old videos of
Alan Smith that if you can’t score, tackle. Sliding into a defender by their
corner flag to force a throw-in might not be a goal creating action, but it
sets a tone, as does Dallas bringing a successful battle with Wilf Zaha to its
zenith by stealing the ball from his toes with his head, or Dan James charging
into tackles on the left wing, and attacking like the only person in Elland
Road relishing Firpo’s half-time introduction. Junior got right back to the
horrors of Brighton in his first two minutes, giving up the ball and trading a
yellow card for stopping the chance, but then his forward combinations with
James were a big part of supposedly forward-looking Palace manager Patrick
Vieira’s decision to throw Benteke on, start launching long diagonals at his
head, and go full Warnock with the timewasting. Getting teams to do this is a
very good sign for Leeds United.
The game was full of good signs. The winner wasn’t a
reversal, it was garnish. A 0-0 draw wouldn’t have been as euphoric, but it
would have been a point to respect. Leeds are adjusting to a bad season now, so
they don’t looked shocked anymore, they look up for it. Returning players like
Pat Bamford and Luke Ayling don’t just represent numbers in a small squad, but
characters, like Adam Forshaw, getting a grip of Struijk after he was booked.
The penalty was the highlight, stuttered away by heart-stopping Raphinha. The
effect on the league table was the balm, as Leeds join the more comfortably
mid-ranking. But it’s the crowd of celebrating players I’ll keep going back to,
maybe even for another thirty years. A gang of Leeds United players channeling
Arthur Seaton’s 1950s defiance in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning: whatever
people say about them, that’s what they’re not.