Burnley 1-1 Leeds United: Demanding - The Square Ball 30/8/21

SHINING

Written by Moscowhite • Daniel Chapman

On a day when the fans were frustrated, the players were bruised, and everyone ended up feeling a bit let down without quite being able to define why, Marcelo Bielsa made it a teachable moment, because he always does. There’s always something new to learn and or consider, although whether this always makes up for not getting three points from some miserable Lancashire town is another matter.

“The difference is that for us to play well we need our creative players to be on top of their game,” he said after drawing in Burnley. “Their style of play means it doesn’t demand that their players shine. This is something of value when you’re describing a team.”

If you didn’t see the game, Burnley’s passing stats will tell you a lot about their style of play. After three games, they’re bottom of the league for attempted short and medium length passes, eighth for long balls. (Don’t let those numbers completely deceive you: top two for attempted long balls are Liverpool and Leeds.) They’re top of the league for high balls. Collectively their players have had the fewest touches of the ball in the Premier League. This is all in line with how last season went, when West Brom and Newcastle got involved in a couple of the categories.

The point is the imprecision. Percentage of passes completed is rock bottom, 67 per cent. Burnley aren’t playing the ball foot to foot, or even foot to head. It’s area to area, into the mixer where it doesn’t matter if Chris Wood gets his head on the ball, as long as he stops a defender from doing it. The knockdown doesn’t have to go to a teammate, just near enough for them to challenge. The players needn’t concern themselves with creating overloads out wide, they just need enough space to swing a cross. All this puts the other team under pressure, and relieves the pressure on Burnley, and best of all, they don’t even need to play well to do it. Wood might not win a single header all day and it doesn’t matter. All their crossing might be off-target but they can just keep trying. The implications of players having an off day are low, because they’re only being asked to get near enough.

That’s not so for Marcelo Bielsa’s players, and he always says two challenges face them in the Premier League. When up against richer and more accomplished opponents, Leeds have to force them to play worse. And when other teams try to force Leeds into playing worse, Leeds have to maintain their own game. “For us to play well we need our creative players to be on top of their game,” he said. If you’re one of Burnley’s creative players, well, first of all you don’t exist. Second, if you’re Ashley Barnes and think that’s you, you can create nothing but still bump things along by trying to break Stuart Dallas’ hip in mid-air. It’s an oft-repeated joke from the GFH era at Leeds that they refused to buy Barnes because he had worse Football Manager stats than Luke Varney. Now he plays for Burnley in the Premier League, the joke is supposed to be on us. But, still, he had worse Football Manager stats than Luke Varney. That’s not something Barnes could be proud of anywhere but Turf Moor.

It’s always going to be harder for Leeds’ players under Bielsa than for Burnley’s under Sean Dyche, despite the latter’s sergeant-major roleplay. At full-time at Turf Moor old pals Liam Cooper and Chris Wood were deep in conversation, the Leeds captain holding up four fingers to make a point to the Burnley striker. My imagination is running wild about Liam saying, “We had four training sessions,” and Chris saying, “Yeah, we had that last week,” and Liam saying, “No, every day.”

It’s an old saw, a mixture of disbelief about the work Bielsa puts his players through to finish 9th, and our admiration for the players who go through it. Last season Aston Villa finished 11th, and had their training sessions moved to the afternoon to allow them long lie-ins and more time for playing Call of Duty into the night. The benefits of early starts, late finishes and hours of rigour between were easy for Bielsa’s players to feel when they were romping the Championship. Keeping their discipline in the middle of the Premier League must be much harder. Couldn’t they just have a day off, one day, if they’re going to finish mid-table anyway? The answer is a stern Bielsa finger wag, an emphatic word, “No!”

After games like these, Leeds fans struggle to see the point of it all too. This is one of the occasional Bielsa weekends when everyone wakes up on Monday asking variations of, ‘Can’t we just…?’ Can’t we just play two up top and go long? Can’t we just play two at the back against their two strikers, instead of three? Can’t we just try playing a different way? Can’t we just play the kids, with or without getting Eddie Gray in? Can’t we just sign a midfielder even if he’s astrologically, scientifically and biologically imperfect by a mathematically irrelevant degree?

That last one — the transfer window — has amplified everything about the winless start to the league season, and every aspect of it is an argument, justified on all sides and therefore unwinnable. Doing two seasons’ worth of signings last summer was good, but will it work if we don’t shop for more now? Keeping our best players was good, but will they stay next summer if we’ve not finished higher? Investing in the Under-23s is good, but what about players ready now? Not overspending on a certain player is good, but what if not paying the premium is a false economy after ending up with nobody? Then there are last season’s signings. Spending £30m was good. How long do we wait for Rodrigo to look worth it?

From the owners’ perspective, if it saves them another cheque, they answer the last one with as long as it takes, because they’ll think that is on him, not them. Likewise if Raphinha wants to leave because our league position hasn’t improved. Isn’t it his job to improve it? And isn’t this sort of the point of sport, and why I’d prefer transfer windows to close before the season starts, and the hysteria around them to reduce. The idea of the league season is that you put together the best squad you can and send them out to play games against what everyone else has got. That’s Bielsa’s shrug when asked about signing cover — he’s got a group of players he likes, he’s got the Under-23s if he needs them, so now it’s team against team, style against style, each trying to impose on the other to find out who can get the most points.

Which is why Burnley were an unhelpful team to face at this point. There wasn’t much choice about Rodrigo once Mateusz Klich was ruled out, like Junior Firpo, with a positive Covid-19 test. But after this perhaps we’d be as well letting Tyler Roberts prove he’s worth his new contract instead. The rest of it, in this season’s new mood of letting tackles go, should have pleased Sean Dyche, who complained at Elland Road last season that, “The game is in a really precarious moment where physicality is at a minimum … It is still the people’s game, and the people have to be careful what they’re wishing for.” I don’t know what people like at Turf Moor, although anti-racism gestures don’t seem high up the list, but if what Burnley are playing is their game, they’re welcome to its combination of brutal fouls on others and crying about soft tackles on them.

Leeds will just have to play their football elsewhere, although after going behind on the hour, when failing to clear a corner meant Wood could deflect a shot past Illan Meslier from a couple of yards, Jamie Shackleton arrived to take United’s forward momentum up a few notches. Bielsa said a couple of weeks ago that he’ll know when young players are ready for the first team because established players will make it obvious they want them there, and I don’t think Raphinha could love Shackleton much more. He’s a barrage from wing-back, giving to Raphinha down the line, getting it back again, giving it back, getting it again, they’re like a trapeze act swinging into Burnley’s box. On the other wing Jackie Harrison, foiled most of the day by Matt Lowton, got a similar double act going with his old pal Stuart Dallas, and Leeds found the creative ascendancy lacking from the first hour. It was just a matter of getting the ball to Pat Bamford where he’d like it — a yard from the line with the goal open, it turned out, four minutes from time — then getting him away from Raphinha before a celebratory flying kick took Pat’s head off. Raphinha had already left Charlie Taylor behind him in a crumpled heap, though that was by dribbling through him. Perhaps he wanted to show Dyche the best of both worlds.

The last 25 minutes were more like Leeds. 70 per cent possession, eighty passes into the attacking third, nineteen crosses, six shots. Burnley had to come up with sixteen tackles and eighteen clearances; they had eleven of their twelve shots before the 65th minute, then Leeds turned up. It’s all in them, and if they’d cleared one corner, that last hot spell might have been worth three points, not one. The morning after a football match, that can be the difference between wishing you could stay under the covers, thinking ‘Can’t we just… change?’, and springing out of bed with the confidence to do it all again because it’s working.