Patrick Bamford is dividing and conquering again for Leeds — The Athletic 11/2/24
By Phil Hay
Sometimes it takes a story like the one told by Patrick
Bamford this week to persuade football to extract its head from that place
where it gets lodged all too easily.
If you haven’t heard it, and you can find his quotes here,
the gist of it involved the Leeds United striker returning home after missing a
penalty against Newcastle United late last season and finding a few Leeds fans,
or people he believed to be Leeds fans, parked across his driveway and giving
him the eye.
Leeds were en route to relegation from the Premier League,
that penalty in what ended as a 2-2 draw tightened the noose and the mood had
become so toxic at Elland Road that an idiot from the crowd who confronted
Newcastle head coach Eddie Howe in the technical area wound up with a 12-week
jail sentence.
None of that, if the tone of those sentences is at all
ambiguous, constitutes fair criticism. None of it constitutes unfair criticism
either, both of which Bamford has grown accustomed to with Leeds. The line
between those can be thin and debatable, and it is fine to neither rate nor
like Bamford.
The Saturday just gone has not won him any friends down the
way in Rotherham. But the line between criticism of a footballer and
intimidation is a mile wide, with no excuse for crossing it. Abuse is one
thing, Bamford said. Feeling threatened at home is another level, and no wonder
if the thought occurred that it might be wise to cut his losses and leave the
club.
It is not as if these five and a half years as a Leeds
player have consistently drenched him in milk and honey, but perhaps that
moment found him at his lowest.
He is nothing if not an enigma, Bamford, and partly because
the debate around him is so endless and contradictory, with constant twists in
the tale. Marcelo Bielsa loved him and the crowd loved Bielsa but that triangle
was never able to complete itself, and some of that was down to Bamford. If
we’re being frank, some of it was down to his finishing, and latterly his
penalties. But at the same time as describing his worst ebb, he looks happier
in his skin than he has for a while, with purpose and, crucially,
newly-dependable fitness.
Bamford missing good chances was never a concern for Bielsa.
All that mattered was that he did what he did as a No 9. But what chance for a
player’s reputation when costly misses combine with a body which is always
letting him down? The tide turned against him and for so long, injuries and
interruptions stopped him from turning it again.
He started a sixth league game in a row in Saturday’s 3-0
mashing of bottom-of-the-table visitors Rotherham United. The last time he did
that, in May 2021, he was on the cusp of what’s still his only England call-up
— a different lifetime.
That Bamford is back and in the goals is indicative of the
fact that he is on the straight and narrow physically, injuries no longer
stalking him.
A mark of that came against Norwich City last month, in the
league game he settled with a header in the first half. On that night, Bamford
covered more distance over 90 minutes than he had at any stage of his Leeds
career, nudging up towards 12km, and it hardly needs saying that under Bielsa’s
gaze, Leeds’ ability to clock up the miles was legendary.
Bamford was the refresh and change in focal point Daniel
Farke required after successive defeats between Christmas and New Year’s Day
turned a little fire on the club’s current manager, and this is the next stage
in the wait to see if Bamford, when the day comes, moves on from Elland Road
with his name in positive or negative equity.
If Leeds have the legs for promotion, taking 18 points from
18 to start 2024, with Bamford in vogue and second place coming into view, will
be seen as a moment when they seriously upped the ante.
Five league wins in a row became six without fuss against
Rotherham, sparked by a goal which Bamford dubiously claimed as his. Only he
knew if it actually was his, but if it was, it should have fallen foul of
deliberate handball — the forward flicking an elbow at a Junior Firpo cross,
which then caught either Sean Morrison or Christ Tiehi and spun inside
Rotherham’s near post.
History shows that Bamford, for all the niceties, has
at-all-costs flashes when he indulges the darker arts but whether his sleeve
touched the ball or not, he made the crowd think it had, with a beaming smile
and no apology.
Leam Richardson, Rotherham’s manager, promised not to make a
big deal of it — then said Bamford had “cheated (the officials) out of a
decision.”
Rotherham last won away from home in the days of Henry VIII
— not quite, but they are genuinely counting the days in hundreds — so when
Leeds scored first on Saturday, that was that.
Farke bristles at his team wasting opportunities they should
devour, primarily because fixtures could be put to bed more rapidly than they
are, but Rotherham, now seven points adrift at the foot of the Championship,
offered less than the collection bowl in an empty church.
Crysencio Summerville should have made it 2-0. Bamford and
Willy Gnonto should have made it 2-0 also. Summerville eventually did, in the
53rd minute, Georginio Rutter slaloming and playing him in, and then scored
Leeds’ third too, when Bamford shaped to take a penalty on the hour before
passing the ball to the Dutch winger. Summerville sized it up and dinked in the
coldest of Panenkas.
That there — Bamford following the script, common sense
prevailing — was everyone on the same page; the only way Leeds as a club ever
get anywhere.
Season six at Elland Road rolls on for him, edging him
closer to a second Premier League promotion with a club who took 16 years to
magic up the first one. Not ignoring the relegation in between, of course, but
Bamford was the pivotal finisher in the Premier League season which went well
for Leeds, and without much acknowledgement, he took himself past 50 league
goals for the club last month, none of which can be in spite of his attributes.
