Barnsley v Leeds United: Barnsley chop for dire Whites
By Phil Hay
Three weeks in and GFH Capital has its first taste of sleepless nights.
The company promised a fresh start and a bright future when it bought Leeds United last month, but as the dust settled on Saturday’s debacle at Barnsley, it felt like the club had been there before.
“Very, very disappointed,” tweeted director Salem Patel two hours after full-time. Read into that what you will. Whether a benign reaction or a pointed message for the benefit of United’s manager and players, it implied that the abject nature of the defeat at Oakwell had not been lost on a group of businessmen far away in the Middle East.
GFH Capital would prefer to be judged on the long game rather than the short term, but the first impression of the firm’s suitability as owner will be drawn from its handling of the second half of the transfer window.
Dispatches to Dubai on Saturday evening cannot have failed to mention the manner of United’s loss, the impact it had on the Championship table or the animosity shown towards Neil Warnock and his squad by the club’s own supporters.
Stewards manned the tunnel as the teams left the field, treading a path past one corner of the away end, but they were required to offer more protection to United’s players than they were to Barnsley’s.
Chants
Jason Pearce appeared to exchange words with a group of fans close to him and Warnock took his share of the abuse having listened to chants of ‘time to go’ as a wasted derby petered out.
This is new territory for him and a whole new concern.
The 64-year-old’s appointment was, give or take, unanimously popular when Leeds threw their eggs in his basket 11 months ago, but on Saturday he saw the rumblings of anger which crept up on Simon Grayson and Gary McAllister before him.
For a coach who once said that the faith of the majority of Leeds’ supporters was needed to keep him in his job, the negative reaction in the minutes around the final whistle begged obvious questions.
Tactics, performances, team selections; all are under scrutiny.
Patel did not expand on his three-word message, but anyone with prior knowledge of Warnock’s history knows that the last time an owner began tweeting negatively – Queens Park Rangers’ Tony Fernandes – Warnock was promptly pushed from his post.
His present employers had enough confidence in him to insist, in their own words, that the retention of him as manager be part of their purchase agreement with chairman Ken Bates, but the defeat at Oakwell laid United bare.
The club have already lost more league games than promoted teams typically lose in a season.
This particular season comes down to promotion for Warnock and GFH Capital’s choice appears to be simple: either give him all he wants in the final two weeks of January and let his tenure play out or accept that promotion in Leeds’ current state might be asking too much.
The club’s squad have toiled for several weeks in spite of some encouraging results and Warnock’s description of the defeat to Barnsley as “abysmal” was as apt a word as he could have found.
Leeds have a habit of self-harming at Oakwell, but their prior record – 4-1 and 5-2 defeats in the past two seasons – was an irrelevance. It did not stand to reason that prior humiliations on Barnsley’s turf would inevitably lead to another.
Barnsley were managerless on Saturday, but driven by the chest-banging vigour of caretaker David Flitcroft and superior in every position bar that of the goalkeepers, largely because Luke Steele saw Paddy Kenny do all the work.
Their win lifted them off the bottom of the Championship.
Mitigation for United’s defeat, inflicted by two quick goals from Chris Dagnall in the second half, was scarce. Warnock found some, however, and brought a laptop into the post-match press conference to show replays of a two-footed tackle by Stephen Dawson on Ross McCormack, committed in the 62nd minute and seconds before United conceded the penalty from which Barnsley opened the scoring.
It was, in fairness to United’s boss, a reckless challenge and contrary to modern rules in every way; a foul missed by referee Craig Pawson.
“Dawson should have been sent off,” Warnock said, “and I want everyone to understand what that tackle was like. I can’t understand how the referee doesn’t give a red card for that.
“It’s a leg-breaking tackle and the game should stop, but they go straight down the field and get a penalty.”
Had he wanted to, Warnock might also have mentioned the volley by debutant Ross Barkley which smashed off the underside of Barnsley’s crossbar five minutes before Dagnall’s first goal but neither incident offered Leeds much defence.
“That was our best spell and they should have been down to 10 men but it doesn’t alter the first half when we were abysmal,” Warnock said.
“Our lads in midfield never got to grips with anything.”
That was, in part, because of Barnsley’s infectious attitude.
In a simple comparison of application and desire, Flitcroft’s players wiped the floor with Leeds. Barkley made his debut a day after signing on loan from Everton but a system which offered him freedom to roam behind United’s strikers was rendered redundant by their inability to keep the ball.
Warnock saw a problem and so did the away following of almost 5,000 who booed Leeds from the field at half-time.
It was a travesty of sorts that Barnsley’s manipulation of the first half failed to yield a goal. Marlon Harewood struck the base of one post and Rodolph Austin cleared the ball off the line after Jimmy McNulty ran free in the box.
Jim O’Brien drew two good saves from Kenny before coming off worst in a tackle with Lee Peltier and leaving the field on a stretcher.
Like 12 months ago when Jacob Butterfield hurt an ankle in the same fixture, Barnsley rode the loss of an influential player without shedding tears.
“We were causing too many problems for Neil not to make changes at half-time,” said Flitcroft, and Warnock did exactly that, casting aside David Norris and El-Hadji Diouf and asking Paul Green and Ross McCormack to raise the dead.
Others were lucky to remain on the pitch at the start of the second half. Carried forward by McCormack’s movement and Barkley’s maturity, Leeds gave Barnsley 15 minutes of hassle and went desperately close to the first goal when Barkley met Becchio’s header with a shot which came back off the bar.
Five minutes later, Dawson dispossessed McCormack with an aggressive lunge and Barnsley’s break up field ended when Sam Byram stuck a leg out against his better judgement and tripped Dagnall.
The striker sent Kenny the wrong way with a rising penalty and, having failed to produce a league goal all season, struck again three minutes later when he anticipated Harewood’s through ball and pulled a neat finish into the far corner of Kenny’s net.
Almost half and hour remained and the grumbling from one end of Oakwell descended into open hostility from which Warnock was not immune. Those looking on saw a takeover bubble rapidly losing air.
Perhaps it is best, as Patel once said, that GFH Capital’s business model is “not predicated on the club being in the Premier League.”