Less stress, Cooper’s cool head and Greenwood’s cameo mean Leeds are almost there - The Athletic 10/4/22
By Phil Hay
First it was Burnley beating Everton in midweek. Then it was
Anthony Gordon’s shot deflecting in off Harry Maguire at lunchtime yesterday,
the start of a pitiful attempt by Manchester United to slap Everton down again.
The first rule of relegation fight club is that nothing out there is going to
help unless you first help yourself.
Leeds United have spent the past month in a spin of manic
emotion, reassured, re-embattled, relieved, reprieved.
The form shows 10 points from four matches, culminating in
this 3-0 win away to second-bottom Watford, but still, the stress was hot in
their veins, too persistent to flush out. Wednesday at Turf Moor was the result
they didn’t want. Manchester United losing at Goodison Park just before their
own kick-off was a second turn for the worse. And so to Vicarage Road, where
the weekend was conspiring to drop Leeds right in it again.
What transpired was Leeds’ biggest win of the season, and a
first clean sheet since November’s 1-0 at home to Crystal Palace.
But it just didn’t feel so routine or cathartic until Jack
Harrison put his left boot through the ball and found the corner of Watford’s
net, the third goal of the afternoon, with five minutes to go. Even then, as
the away end bounced and made the most of the relatively rich pickings, what
was left was the feeling that this club needs a holiday; rest, recuperation, a
little life without peril.
It might be they are already there with 33 points on the
board but they have two full weeks until their next game at Palace on April 25,
with four fixtures for Burnley in the meantime and a season which seems
determined to take its pound of flesh.
“By the time we play Palace, the table will be tight again,”
said Jesse Marsch, the son of a Wisconsin tractor-builder counting no chickens.
Did he think Leeds are still in a relegation battle after
this win? “Oh yeah. Everyone’s getting results around us.”
In the dressing room post-match, Marsch asked Liam Cooper to
address his squad because, in a game of extraordinarily low quality, Leeds’
skipper was the player who more than any other kept his head. “I haven’t had a
better captain in my entire time as a coach,” Marsch said, and while the sample
size for that accolade is not vast, Leeds would go back many years to find a
captain with a better knack for maintaining standards, either in the way he
plays or in the way he acts.
On the day and in the heat of a long, tiring run to the
finish line, little brushes of skill combined with someone nailing the basics
at the back were what it took to bury Watford. “I do want us to play better and
be more confident,” Marsch, said but results are buying himself time to start
satisfying the style council.
In comparison, opposite number Roy Hodgson looked more
ghostly, not quite ready to phone relegation in but far too long in this game
to deny that Watford will soon be needing snookers.
When a season gets to April, the name of the game is not to outrun the bear. It is to outrun enough of the others the bear is about to maul, and Hodgson is one of them.
There were periods yesterday where Leeds were as loose as
Watford, periods where neither team seemed schooled in the art of ball
retention, but the visitors had a couple of ace cards to play: Raphinha’s
25-yard peach in the first half to open the scoring and Harrison’s clean hit to
wrap everything up. The last five minutes after the latter were wonderfully
danger-free.
In between, there was some help of sorts from their hosts, a
stray ball from Samir which Rodrigo stole before running around Ben Foster and
sliding into an empty net. No question that it killed the impetus Watford were
chaotically building, with Leeds putting very little together as the game went
into the last 20 minutes still at 1-0.
But the difference in these teams’ respective league
positions is there because of the difference in levels; not vast or
overwhelming but there when it came to put up or shut up. The clean sheet was
Leeds’ first for 18 matches, an indicator about which of these teams might be
staying up and which is going down.
Stress has been on Marsch’s mind since he replaced Marcelo
Bielsa at the end of February, specifically the job of easing it and quelling
it. He has taken to making Thursdays, or match day minus-two as football likes
to call it, a gentler day and trying to avoid over-stating the importance of
individual games, even if the table speaks for itself.
Last week was managed in that way and Leeds’ board are
getting from him what they wanted when they sacked Bielsa: results, plain and
simple, which keep the club away from the rocks.
There is a culture war brewing in the longer term, the
battle to entertain a public who want to be entertained, but for the past
month, Leeds have been better than anyone else in the bottom five at digging
out points. Hodgson sounded like a coach who no longer expects to find a spade.
Saturday’s result was nicely influenced by a short cameo
from Sam Greenwood, the less feted half of a pairing with Joe Gelhardt which is
almost inseparable away from the pitch.
It was Greenwood’s pass that sent Watford backwards and drew
that mistake from Samir on 73 minutes. It was Greenwood dropping off and then
sending the ball forward which gave Harrison the sight of Foster’s far corner,
a goal which intensified the banging of seats emptying in the home stands that
had begun when Ismael Sarr slashed at Watford’s best chance when only a goal
down.
Few noises of dissent speak so loudly.
“I said to Sam two days ago that of the entire player pool,
he’s the one who’s adapting best in terms of understanding what we want,” Marsch
said. “I’ve got to find ways of using him more.” Leeds’ head coach, no doubt,
would like some freedom to experiment before this season lets everyone off the
hook.
“But I’m really excited that we were able, in a tough moment
and in a really tough game, to emerge,” he said. “A clean sheet, three goals on
the day and a massive result is important for us.”
Priorities, in other words, and survival is the biggest of
them.
Longer term, Leeds will not thrive without more quality.
Longer term, pressure will come for an identity that pleases the eye.
But in stepping out of a car crash, the last thing anyone
thinks about is the fate of the car.