Awkward question for Leeds United chiefs as goal reaction says it all — Graham Smyth's Hull Verdict — YEP 5/1/25
By Graham Smyth
Illan Meslier plays for the best team in the Championship
but he's not performing anywhere close to that level.
The reactions from his team-mates as he quite literally
dropped a clanger to let Hull City back into a game that eventually ended 3-3,
said it all. Anger, frustration, disbelief, disgust. Hearts are worn on sleeves
in the heat of the moment and they were all beating to the same drum.
At 3-1 up Leeds looked home and hosed. Their blistering
start to the second half had put a desperately poor first half in the rear view
mirror. Ao Tanaka curled in a beauty to cancel out Abu Kamara's opener - for
which Meslier had both been let down by his defence and stranded hopelessly in
no man's land outside his area. Dan James briefly climbed out of the doldrums
of his poorest display for months to tuck in a second. And Joel Piroe did the
same, reminding everyone that even when he's not playing well he can finish so
sweetly from just about anywhere.
"3-1 in your cup final," crowed the away fans,
whose side were coasting to a three-point lead at the top of the table.
Fast forward nine minutes and a header was looping
harmlessly towards the Leeds goal. Meslier, who had started to come for a
free-kick delivery before thinking better of it, moved back onto his goal-line,
reached up and somehow let the ball drop from his gloves to his feet where Joao
Pedro was waiting to gleefully pounce. It wasn't even a chance, never mind a
difficult save and yet from that moment the die was all-but cast. Sure as day,
Hull pressed for an equaliser and when Meslier failed to connect with an
attempted punch, Kamara drilled a shot past the now wrong-footed goalkeeper.
"3-1 and you ****ed it up," crowed the home fans, with painful
accuracy.
That it was Kamara who put the ball in the net was fateful,
if not more than a little ironic. A day before the game he was sitting
awkwardly next to his manager in order to apologise for the 'crime' of
congratulating a pal on social media for scoring a goal for Portsmouth. Some
Hull fans took umbrage at his emoji-based response, because it came on the day
when Kamara failed to track his runner as Middlesbrough scored a winner against
the Tigers.
The strength of anger among Leeds fans on Saturday evening
would not have been sated by Meslier appearing on trial, let alone next to
Daniel Farke for a press conference to deliver an apology for his crimes at MKM
Stadium. When Farke sat down with the press he refused to point the finger at
his goalkeeper and would not castigate him in public. What could he say,
though? What needed to be said? Again, just watch Meslier's team-mates in the
split second after the goal.
This is not the first time that Leeds have been agonisingly
close to three points on the road but had to settle for one due to their
goalkeeper's mistake. The howler in the final seconds at Sunderland was perhaps
even harder to comprehend than the one that gifted Hull their second. Even
putting to one side those inexplicable lapses in concentration, though,
Meslier's general performance as a goalkeeper is asking enough questions of his
place in the team. In fact, were he to be overperforming or even simply performing
as a shot-stopper then those high profile errors could almost be overlooked.
What you tend to find when a goalkeeper errs, is that his
manager will bring up occasions when his number one saved the day. The points
he has secured almost single-handedly. What, though, would Farke bring up this
season? Has Meslier stood on his head to dig Leeds out of a hole? Has there
been any sublime to go with the ridiculous? Very little springs to mind. Even
clean sheets are not such a feather in the cap when you play for a team that
dominates so much possession and restricts teams to very few shots or chances.
And sadly for the Frenchman even the numbers offer no real solace. A metric
entitled 'post-shot expected goals' is Expected Goals based on the likelihood
of a goalkeeper saving a shot. When you take away the goals conceded from the
PSxG you get a sense of a goalkeeper's performance relative to the saves they
could be reasonably expected to make and the ones they let in.
Last season Leicester City's Mads Hermansen was essentially
expected to concede almost 46 goals and yet allowed just 41 to go past him. He
was at the very top end of the Championship table in this regard. Meslier was
26th in that table for keepers playing at least 10 games, such was his
under-performance. This season, Burnley's James Trafford and Sheffield United's
Michael Cooper are in the top five of the division's stoppers. By the time the
stats are adjusted to include Saturday's game, Meslier will again sit below the
Championship average but he was 18th as this was being written.
Simply put, Leeds are not getting a league-leading tune out
of their goalkeeper. Farke has dropped players in other positions over their
form but is yet to send that kind of message to the man between the sticks. The
FA Cup break next week will perhaps afford him a chance to take a look at Karl
Darlow's form and confidence.
But even if Meslier was the headline act in a circus of a
game at Hull, he was far from alone in producing something sub-par. Leeds in
the first half were sloppy in their final third work and the defending for
Kamara's first goal was desperately poor. Max Wober, who did not play well in
the first 45 minutes, let the winger run off him onto a ball that split the
Leeds centre-backs.
Manor Solomon, Piroe and Brenden Aaronson were all guilty of
milquetoast finishing in great positions. Had it not been for the woodwork,
Leeds would have gone further behind too because Regan Slater had a good chunk
of goal to aim at but sent his shot against the post.
Then came Tanaka's screamer. A goal that deserved to grace a
victory. James got his goal and Piroe lasered his shot into the back of the
net. There were chances to put the result beyond doubt, but what happened next
was harder to watch than any wastefulness at the other end. A game that was
firmly in Leeds' grasp began to escape them and Hull had their tails up. Even
still, James went one-on-one with Ivor Pandur in a remarkably similar situation
to Kamara's opener. This time, as if to rub Meslier's nose in it further, the
goalkeeper came out on top. And the 89th minute equaliser, for which Meslier
did play a larger part than he would have liked, just added salt to the wound
and summed up a madcap afternoon.
Leeds finished the day still top of the Championship, still
the best after 26 games but by just one solitary point. As awkward a question
as it is to ask for Farke and the club hierarchy, where might they be if they
had a keeper producing something close to the division's best?