Leeds United 1-2 West Ham United: Good Enough - The Square Ball 27/9/21

 

NEXT TIME, EH?

Written by Moscowhite • Daniel Chapman

I went to Elland Road expecting Leeds United to lose to West Ham United, and that happened. But I didn’t expect Leeds to play brilliantly while losing, and their being so good made everything much worse. It might even be why, despite leading for a long time, they lost.

Marcelo Bielsa’s winless wonders had the happy Hammers right where they needed them in the first half. Everything was going right for the home team and wrong for their guests. Said Benrahma kept forlornly trying to pull Kalvin Phillips out of position so his team mates could dominate midfield and get at the centre-backs, but Phillips and Jamie Shackleton had him all sorted, and all Benrahma’s runs only made him a spectator. In a five minute spell near the first half’s end, Benrahma didn’t touch the ball. He’s one of their best players, deleted by his own plan.

Leeds United’s plans were working well, despite being dented out of shape by injuries from front to back. Shackleton was very good at right-back, Charlie Cresswell’s Premier League debut was an exercise in not getting bullied, alongside him Liam Cooper was enjoying the physical challenge of Michail Antonio more than he’d enjoyed the challenge of chasing Allan Saint-Maximin at Newcastle.

Up front, Leeds had to prove that last summer’s £30m signing could fill in for the player he might have replaced, Pat Bamford, who has been busy raising his own value to probably twice that. Rodrigo finally fit the attacking midfield bill at St James’ Park last week, and played even better here as a striker by still adopting his midfield strategies. He played a different game to Bamford, and it’s useful in a small squad to have players offering more than like for like. With West Ham using two defensive midfielders and Benrahma making himself scarce, Rodrigo timed runs to the centre circle to take a pass from the back four, sending Stuart Dallas and Mateusz Klich, plus Dan James and Junior Firpo on one side, Raphinha and Shackleton on the other, all racing forward to attack with Rodrigo’s spin and pass. With six players storming forward and the seventh, Rodrigo, supposedly the number nine now coming at them from deep, West Ham were struggling to mark up and stop Leeds pouring forward.

Stopping Raphinha was a big problem when he was on the ball, as with wavering fitness he looked determined to make the most of every minute he could manage. Aaron Cresswell tried taking his legs off in one tackle but Raphinha hurdled him almost imperceptibly. Benrahma was made ashamed by a vicious nutmeg. The centre-backs were pleading with Cresswell to stop him running in from the right and shooting. They couldn’t relax while he was off the ball, either. Rodrigo’s movement meant other Leeds players could put themselves at nine, and you’d better believe Raphinha was happy about doing just that.

You could argue that West Ham gave Raphinha his goal, when a stumble by Tomas Soucek let Rodrigo run free with his ball. But Leeds’ hard work and high press created the circumstances for that mistake. There was still a lot to do, too: Klich had to fend off and fool Declan Rice to take Rodrigo’s pass, and then a lot depended on his lay off. At Newcastle we saw Raphinha take a touch and lose a golden opportunity; later in this game, he took his time lining up a shot and hit the post. Klich didn’t leave him anything to think about. It would have been a hurtful snub had Raphinha not shot from that pass, first time on the run, and the ball in the net was all the proof.

That was the nineteenth minute. From then until first half stoppage time Leeds were in command, Leeds were playing as well as they have for months, Leeds should have scored more. Raphinha hit the post, Dallas was close, then Dallas was miles away, somewhere on the Steve Morison scale. This was all a needed reminder that Leeds are a good team with plenty of good players — this was far from a first eleven, with Cresswell, Firpo and James all new. They can play very well and I think they can beat West Ham. They didn’t, though.

In first half stoppage time West Ham remembered they were part of this game, and forced Illan Meslier to make more great saves, following a bunch at the start of the game before Leeds got control. They came out for the second half with the benefit of a David Moyes half-time sort out, which seems to the basis of his recent success at West Ham: they have a lot of solid, experienced players who respond to his instructions. Rodrigo could no longer find the same depth to dictate attacks; Raphinha wasn’t given the same space to torture. Jackie Harrison replaced James’ quiet first half with a quiet second half — Jackie tweeted later to say it was his first day out of Covid quarantine and it showed. There was a good chance for him, when Rodrigo tapped a crossed ball into his path, but the shot didn’t work. There was a huge chance for Klich when Raphinha, on a dribble, pulled the ball back to him near the penalty spot. His precise placement was precisely wide.

Not scoring again was looking very unwise by this time. Leeds were not playing badly now but West Ham are obviously strong, and while the Hammers were getting away with giving up chances, there’s something about Leeds that means when things go wrong, they go very wrong. Finally West Ham’s movement paid off because Junior Firpo had gone a-marking miles away from his wing, and Jarrod Bowen popped up in the space and scored by deflecting his shot off both Cooper and Firpo because why wouldn’t he.

The equaliser coincided with Raphinha’s fitness catching up with him, and Tyler Roberts taking over on the right wing. His game was not to nutmeg his way into the penalty area, but to use Shackleton and Klich as underlapping partners to keep putting pressure on Cresswell. The full-back didn’t look much more comfortable about it, but a chip from Roberts to Rodrigo that he hit at the keeper was about the best return.

Leeds weren’t looking doomed, though. It might have been better if they had. Bielsa said he wished they’d not been so defensive in the closing stages, deciding to hold the point, but I don’t think that was unanimous. Leeds weren’t creating clear chances but they were getting close enough to West Ham’s box to think they might. Desperate for a league win, and after playing so well for so much of the game, they had every reason to think they could make a chance and score the winner.

That’s what they were trying to do, in the ninetieth minute, when West Ham broke against a stretched Leeds defence. There were eight Leeds players level or ahead of the ball, thirty yards from West Ham’s goal. A few minutes earlier Dallas then Klich and Phillips had hunted Benrahma in one of those exhilarating packs people like to clip as Bielsa’s Leeds at their best. Nobody could stop Antonio now, though, when Rice put him through the middle. Referee Kevin Friend might have stopped him, if he’d sent him off for an elbow that bloodied Meslier’s mouth, as well as disallowing the goal that resulted. A red card might have been a bit much, though. The other hope was the desertion of his magic touch: Antonio is living Paul Warhurst’s story from the 1990s, when he swapped from Sheffield Wednesday’s defence to attack and scored his way into England contention, until it gradually became apparent that those stars were only aligning for a while and he ended up in Blackburn’s midfield. Maybe a change of club or coach will wake Antonio from his goalscoring dream and he’ll start missing chances like these, but Jamie Shackleton’s tackle wasn’t going to do it, leaving him a free run at Meslier to score the winner.

I joked during the week that given how well Charlie Cresswell played as a centre-back against Fulham, we should try him up front to make sure he’s not actually the new John Charles. It wasn’t so funny when it was happening in stoppage time, hoping to somehow grab a point when an hour earlier we’d glimpsed and grasped at winning. Of course, this being Bielsa’s Leeds, they had West Ham penned in and who knows, given five more minutes, they might have done it. This wasn’t Blackburn on Boxing Day 2018, though.

This was a good match and a good performance and, so strike me down, I enjoyed it. The results won’t let us admit this but every game at Elland Road this season has been good quality entertainment. I was loving the game with Liverpool, until they scored, because it was end to end and there were exciting chances and good players to watch on both sides. Against West Ham we could add the fervour of Cresswell’s debut, the quality of Rodrigo and Raphinha upsetting the Hammers’ defence, the lead we took, the chances to double or triple it. We could have won. Then they scored twice. That doesn’t mean we’re not good enough, but that only makes it more frustrating that there isn’t anything in the win column yet. Dear Watford, please be rubbish next week, thank you.