How do Leeds start ticking again? Newcastle should bring some answers - The Athletic 13/9/21

By Phil Hay

Football in perspective and football to one side as Harvey Elliott, the precocious Liverpool teenager, left the pitch with a badly dislocated ankle. His stretcher was carried to the ambulance by Leeds United’s medics, all of whom ran on to help tend to the stricken midfielder.

The co-operation of both physio teams is the surest sign of a serious injury and thoughts were with the 18-year-old Elliott, who looked as mature and slick as any of Liverpool’s players in their 3-0 win at Elland Road. But from there it was left to Leeds to contemplate the consequences inflicted on them by a game which strayed too close to being chastening.

Elliott’s injury brought with it a red card for Pascal Struijk for the tackle in which the youngster was hurt on 57 minutes. Struijk’s dismissal was debatable (debatable enough to encourage an appeal, though Leeds coach Marcelo Bielsa said he was inclined to accept it), but as their fourth Premier League game of the new season went by without a victory, their fifth outing seemed destined to arrive with only one centre-back available to Bielsa.

Struijk had come on for Diego Llorente, who limped out of the first half yesterday. Robin Koch was not fit enough to make the match-day squad. Liam Cooper is last man standing, for all Sadio Mane tried to run him into the ground.

To Newcastle United on Friday night, then, and an early pressure point in Leeds’ campaign.

The choice of players, or the potential lack of it, in central defence is beyond Bielsa’s control but the shade of vulnerability in a team who never shy away from a knife fight is an immediate priority to address.

Liverpool were too good for Leeds on Sunday; too classy and too adept at punishing the amount of space they were presented with, to the point where they were able to enjoy the heat of a full Elland Road. Time and again, Bielsa’s players were caught in the traps counterpart Jurgen Klopp set for them, and sliced open in transition.

Bielsa talked beforehand about the “dream” scenario of Raphinha, Jack Harrison and Patrick Bamford outshining Mohamed Salah, Diogo Jota and Sadio Mane. If Leeds were to win, that would have to happen, Bielsa said. But in the smoke of battle yesterday, there was no contest once Rodrigo wasted an early gift of a pass from Raphinha.

Leeds produced nine shots on goal in the game. Mane had 10 by himself. After so many near misses, his finish in second-half stoppage time wrapped proceedings up, a goal he had earned. “The difference between their offensive players and our offensive players was linked to the (plan) Klopp had,” Bielsa said. The German doffed his cap to Bielsa in the technical area beforehand and then sent his team out to take the Argentinian’s apart.

These fixtures are precarious for Leeds because, as happened at Old Trafford last month, the results can be savage when the opposition click and they do not. Salah was tailor-made as a foil for Leeds’s man-marking, manipulating Junior Firpo with merciless movement, helping Trent Alexander-Arnold overlap in a way that presented him with the first goal and touching the ball before half-time more than any of Bielsa’s side.

Leeds can strangle teams man-for-man but on off-colour days, the tactic can be costly.

“We lost by a three-goal difference,” Bielsa said. “At Manchester United (last month), it was four. And both results were fair.”

Liverpool have a spring in their step, more sprightly than they were in their Premier League title defence a year ago, and there is a sense of the division’s top four flexing their muscles, looking refreshed and more difficult to aggravate than they were last season.

A better benchmark for Leeds are the teams they expect to drive through, such as Burnley last month and Newcastle in four days.

Newcastle, like Burnley, are a club Leeds beat twice last season. They are a club forever on the brink of furious mutiny and a club who, as coach Steve Bruce came very close to admitting, stood still over the summer by signing nobody apart from Joe Willock. If Leeds are on for another stable top-flight season, Friday night on Tyneside is prime time — an occasion when they would hope to turn it on.

Bielsa was asked after Sunday’s final whistle how satisfied he was with the first four games of the season.

“What I’m dissatisfied with is my own performance,” he said.

It hurt that Klopp had outwitted him so emphatically. Leeds have lost soundly to Liverpool and Manchester United over the past month, Bielsa conceded.

“So I can’t be satisfied with the way I’ve managed these games.” In his three years at the club, it is hard to recall an occasion when he has blamed disappointing results on anyone other than himself.

He is pulling on the reins at present, trying to make good the things that cast his team as a handful. Possession in dangerous and advanced areas has been tough to come by in patches and loose passing was what Liverpool were waiting for.

It is true, too, that Bielsa’s midfield lacks a feeling of balance or permanency. The persistence with Rodrigo at No 10, an experiment the manager wants to make work, is struggling to bear fruit and Bielsa, having fought the Spaniard’s corner publicly, found himself substituting the guy again at half-time yesterday.

Had Rodrigo stuck away Leeds’s best chance instead of driving it straight at goalkeeper Allison, Bielsa’s post-match thoughts might not have been so introspective.

One thing that can be said about Leeds this season is that their ability to make matches turn their way at moments when those fixtures are in the balance has not been so instinctive. But against Liverpool, the 90 minutes were not a story of fine margins; just an away team with too much quality for their hosts.

The way in which Leeds failed to join the dots was summed up in the second half by Raphinha coming short as Luke Ayling sent a ball down the touchline in front of him. Not quite on the usual wavelength then, and beaten before Struijk received his red card with a third of the game still to play.

There were supportive chants for Bielsa from the crowd as the last few minutes petered out and applause for him from the gathering who stayed behind in the West Stand to watch his television interviews.

Nobody wants to think that this is more than a glitch because Bielsa has never had to deal with major glitches at Leeds, even in the 48 hours after that pivotal, and in some ways defining, evening at Nottingham Forest in February of last year.

Newcastle away now looms, a visit to a club with one point and a league-high 12 goals against from their four games and all the buzz of a human resources training day.

It’s a trip that should answer some questions.