Southampton 1-0 Leeds United: off and on again - The Square Ball 17/10/21

FORM VS FATE

Written by Moscowhite • Daniel Chapman

Ralph Hasenhuttl trapped another one in his ramshackle counter-pressing castle. Last season he said that Marcelo Bielsa “has a completely opposite way of thinking than I do,” and on Saturday, at the third time of asking, his way won. It’s 5-1 to Leeds on aggregate over the three inter-philosophical legs.

Clinging to last season’s wins might sound desperate after this abject 1-0 defeat, but it’s relevant because the three games were basically the same. This weekend feels like a low point for Leeds under Bielsa, but so was half-time in the game against Southampton in February, when Bielsa responded to a dire, mistake-strewn first half when Leeds had one shot on target, one off, and couldn’t even take a throw-in right by bringing on Helder Costa instead of Pablo Hernandez. Elland Road was empty so all the rage was online, after three defeats in the previous four games, and there was a lot of it. But anger was all off again two minutes into the second half because Tyler Roberts drilled a pass through the middle, Pat Bamford scored with a precise shot inside the post, Southampton collapsed and Leeds won 3-0. (Then Leeds lost the next two and drew 0-0 with Chelsea before winning seven of the season’s last ten.) The trip to St Mary’s in May wasn’t so different, Leeds only going ahead in the 73rd minute, although with Kiko Casilla in goal, Gaetano Berardi on the bench and Koch and Klich already gone to the Euros, there was a more relaxed vibe.

This season’s game followed the script, only the sourness wasn’t snipped at half-time, but deepened and prolonged through to full-time, post-match, the weekend, the week, probably into the game against Wolves next Saturday, though hopefully not out the other side. Hasenhuttl got the same disruptive, belligerent first half out of his players as in the two previous games — former captain Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg once said Southampton “want to be disgusting to play against” — but when Leeds showed signs of asserting themselves after half-time, Southampton snuffed the game out with a counter-attack. Trap set, trap sprung, game lost. United deserved to lose based on the first half, and ruined their chance of turning it round in the second. Things that should have come good became bad: Adam Forshaw’s return to first team football, Joffy Gelhardt’s Premier League debut, Leeds United Football Club in general.

One unnerving aspect of the defeat is the Opta stat that Leeds were outrun for the first time since returning to the Premier League, by three kilometres. That one passes the eye test. Most of Southampton’s running was done to loose balls Leeds were ambling to, or by pulling defenders out of position as Nathan Redmond and Armando Brojo turned marking into chasing. Jackie Harrison and Dan James sprinted down their wings maybe once, or twice? They might have added more to the team distance but every forward run ended on halfway, sending them back towards their own full-back, Southampton’s goal looking further and further away.

One reason for difference between this second half and the previous two is that sometimes Southampton just hit their horrible stride. Hasenhuttl got the game he was looking for. “If you expect a five-star dinner you will not see it,” he said in his pre-match press conference. “It’s more about wining duels, winning second balls, using the space that you get for a short moment properly. This means a lot of bad passes also included … It will not always be nice to watch, with a lot of mistakes because of the pressure both sides put on the other.” That ‘opposite’ way of thinking to Bielsa is about pressing the ball opposed to marking the player, and that pressure meant Leeds were too busy giving the ball away to have any time to mark up. Digging through Hasenhuttl’s coaching history, this caught my eye: ‘an emphasis on forcing the ball off the pitch in wide areas to disrupt opposition wing players’. Watching Mateusz Klich rolling the ball out of play, or Harrison internalising a scream every time he dribbled over the paint, you could see how thoroughly Leeds were being suckered.

Hasenhuttl’s problem at Southampton is consistency. They did all this to Manchester City a month ago, restricting the Citizens to a 0-0 draw, one shot on target, and xG of 1.0. That followed a 0-0 with West Ham, who were kept down to 0.6 xG, and 1-1 with Solskjaer’s blunderers, who managed 1.5 xG. This holds for last season, too: a narrow 1-0 defeat at home to Manchester City, who were kept to 1.1 xG; a 1-1 draw with Chelsea who tracked 1.2 xG; a 1-0 win over Liverpool, when the Reds’ 1.1 xG and the Saints’ three points reduced Hassenhutl to actual tears. But look at the other scores: Solskjaer’s fiasco beat them 9-0 and 3-2, Manchester City got them back 5-2, matched by Spurs; the return match with Liverpool was a 2-0 defeat, the return with Chelsea a 3-3 draw. When it goes a bit wrong for Southampton, their plans implode, and Hassenhutl looks all talk. But when it goes right the best coaches in the world come away feeling mugged. “We didn’t win because our process for the build-up or to give better balls for our players up front was not good,” Pep Guardiola said last month. “We didn’t do the process for our back four and Fernandinho. The five guys who have to bring the ball to the other players, today it was not good.”

That’s pretty much where Leeds failed too, and a lack of key players was one reason. Bielsa wasn’t agreeing about that afterwards, and he was right that, “It’s not like we started the game with players who don’t play usually.” The team looked strong enough to win. But the deficiencies were more about type. When Leeds can’t get the ball to their striker, Pat Bamford can be relied upon to press and tackle; Rodrigo, who was excellent creating from no.9 against West Ham two games ago, didn’t do a thing. From the other angle, Kalvin Phillips has the vision and passing to see through the crowded midfield that Southampton barge their opponents into, and Leeds longed for him taking the ball from the defenders and doing exactly that. It’s not that Leeds can’t cope without these two in any games, but against Southampton their specific strengths matched United’s specific needs.

There still should have been enough on the pitch to cover the absences, but the biggest gap in midfield was the one between Mateusz Klich’s brain and feet. He had more responsibility in Phillips’ absence, but played the sort of game where if he’d tried spray painting a wall, he’d have turned his face blue. One of Leeds’ best moments in the short spell after half-time came when Diego Llorente bypassed Klich and sent James directly into the penalty area, where James did give Klich the ball, and lo, he did give it to Southampton, who countered. Redmond’s run caught Llorente out on halfway, and all he could do was swipe Brojo’s legs as punishment for hitting Redmond’s lay-off into the net.

Klich played as if with the shadow of Phillips and Conor Gallagher weighing him down, although it’s worth noting Gallagher has inspired Crystal Palace to exactly one win so far. But if not him, then the constant idea of The Great Someone, who Bielsa swept off the table when Gallagher or Lewis O’Brien didn’t come this summer. “The situation is to find players who can overcome the players we already have, at a low price,” he said near the end of the transfer window. “Low prices at the moment are prices which are very high.” There are two pool-limiting principles at play. First, that Bielsa won’t overpay for players. Second, that he won’t sign players just to have extra bodies in the squad. “If there are signings, but they’re below the level of the players we already have, there’s disappointment because they’re not up to standard.” Leeds couldn’t find an improvement on Klich or Dallas for a sensible price, basically, and Bielsa would rather have the players he knows, loves and trusts, who proved their Premier League quality by finishing 9th, just back the other side of the summer.

The hitch now is those players are not meeting their own standards. But is that down to attributes and ability — is Mateusz Klich suddenly permanently incapable — or is it down to form, which is temporary? And, even after 150 years of association football, largely unknowable. I quoted a lot, too many, expected goals figures above; one point of xG is to show where a team could be if its actual finishing form was matching its creative ability, with the idea that under- or over-performance will return to the expectations eventually. But nobody has ever adequately explained why actuality should veer from expectation in the first place, other than shrugging that it’s ‘form’.

Meanwhile, another of Bielsa’s principles is climbing back on the table where a new midfielder was supposed to be, either limiting or defining him and us, or both, depending on your point of view (and results). Bielsa’s belief that ‘the nobility of the resources used’ is important in football has been a stick to beat him whenever those noble resources have carried his ideals to defeat. What good is nobility when Newcastle United can climb the Premier League by spending their Saudi millions on Donny van de Beek? Ideally, Klich or Dallas in midfield would make that kind of deal look as stupid for Leeds as it should look for anyone. But this stupid weekend was not ideal for ideals about deals.

United’s form has a mysterious on-off switch under Bielsa. Remember it flicking off for no reason at half-time against Cardiff one day? Then, after two wins in eleven, back on for twelve wins out of fourteen. All while not a single change was made. With some help from fitness, form could soothe away all our worries by January, easy as that. Like half-time against Southampton in February, this could all soon be forgotten. But then Klich gives away another throw-in and you start to question everything.