Aston Villa 3-3 Leeds United: Turning up - The Square Ball 10/2/22

FROLICKING

Written by: Moscowhite • Daniel Chapman

After a fortnight’s flirtation with football as done without them, what a rush going hurtling back into Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds United playing a game a way nobody else could dare to try. It’s chaos as a choice with beauty as its goal.

“We wanted to take the sting out of the game,” said Aston Villa manager Steven Gerrard. He didn’t get what he wanted until the second half, when his team was finally near neutralised by their zealous opponents. The sting went when Phillipe Coutinho limped off, his muscles sore and tired. “A fun game for the fans tonight, but not one for the coaches,” added Stevie, misreading Bielsa’s inscrutability as much as he misread his pre-match method for calming United down. I reckon Bielsa had a great time.

Who would want to be calm when this is the alternative? A particular plaint of Leeds fans is that this season isn’t being as much fun. But the first half at Villa Park was a full throwback to the giddiness of last season, Villa Park being one of its highlights, a Pat Bamford inspired 3-0 win feeling great at the time but looking different on the results table, sandwiched between a 1-0 defeat by Wolves and consecutive 4-1 losses to Crystal Palace and Leicester. Then came a frustrating 0-0 draw at home with Arsenal, and it wasn’t until Raphinha took it to Goodison Park that Leeds got another win. Even when Leeds were top of the Championship the league table and the form table and the list of scores rarely made comfortable reading before 16th July 2020, and in the Premier League it’s looked much worse — fifteen defeats last season, nine so far this. But if we love the game for escapism, let the games escape the tyranny of The Game.

What has a league table got that is so interesting it could distract you from a match as fun as this? Villa three Leeds three was a gift and it’s a mistake to dissolve its joys like aspirin and think only of the pain of points tallies or goal difference. Neither were harmed in the construction of this entertainment. Given Leeds’ league position before the game, a point from Villa Park was worth having. So why not take that point in the most dramatic way possible, mixing up chances of winning with the risk of defeat, coming up with a match that has a chance of being remembered for more than the final score? When struggling teams talk about nicking a point away from home, this is never what they mean, but how much better it is this way than digging deep down into the miserabilism.

The seventeen days since losing to Newcastle let woe mount, on the internet at least. By kick-off at Villa Park online Leeds fans had no more soil for burying our wretched players so turned to screaming at Bielsa in the sky for naming the same starting eleven. Adam Forshaw didn’t come back in because, Bielsa said, Dan James, Rodrigo or Mateusz Klich “would have had to come out, and after their performance against Newcastle I thought they deserved to stay in the team.” This was not the fandom’s required response to defeat by the Geordies but we know it has worked for Bielsa before, praising the players’ for their performance in a squalid defeat at Nottingham Forest and sending them out to air their resilience against Brentford.

Against Aston Villa James, Rodrigo and Klich were the maligned who flourished, Rodrigo with maybe his best, most creative game for Leeds, James with the sharpest finishing we’ve seen. They, with Klich’s help, made the opening goal, against the organisation of the play if not its run. Leeds looked unstable at the back in the first few minutes, but not so flimsy collectively as one individual Tyrone Mings, who was lightly shuffled out of the way by Klich as Rodrigo took control. He slipped a pass into James and his early shot, precise into the far bottom corner, was a one-kick TED Talk about why you don’t need to be perceived as a natural striker to be able to strike naturally.

His second might not have had that class, but like his awkward header to score against Burnley while taking a boot to the neck, it had the components — right place, right time, right attitude towards getting the ball over the line — for him to get shoved into heading it by Mings’ incompetence in the six yard box. The chance came from a slick move, Pascal Struijk striding out of defence, Jackie Harrison preoccupying Matty Cash down the wing, Robin Koch chipping a clever pass ahead of Klich’s run behind in the penalty area, Klich beating three defenders with a backheel for Rodrigo’s run beyond him. Small spaces, big ideas. Then it was about danger in the six yard box and the fortunate sort of deflection Leeds never got, despite similar good works, against Newcastle. In between those goals James also smacked a long range shot off the bar, and while he insisted post-match that learning to play centre-forward is just about keeping on “believing and making them runs”, he played in-match like someone who knows what’s being said about him.

Also in between those goals Aston Villa scored three. This can be summed by Luke Ayling’s answer, asked if he’d enjoyed marking Coutinho. “No,” he said. It might have been interesting to see what influence Coutinho had if Gerrard had managed the sting out of the game, if he’d tightened it up how he wanted. Leeds imposed their idea of how the game should go, but that gave Coutinho the room to do damage in thirteen minutes before half-time. From that point of view the first was the worst, and from Bielsa’s past references to goals conceded from throw-ins it will have caused him most pain — a throw passed back to the taker, a ball into the box, Coutinho with time to spin and shoot, too easy, and unlike the two goals that followed, nothing to do with an open style of play or tactical choices. Save that for the second, Villa passing in and out of the empty centre circle as first Emi Buendia dropped deep, then Coutinho, who had the skill to spin Ayling and the vision to let Jacob Ramsey free in front of Mateusz Klich’s chase. They combined again for the third, when Leeds were caught out wondering why Raphinha didn’t get a free-kick for being dragged around by Lucas Digne, or whether Villa would get a free-kick for a big lunge that cost Stuart Dallas a booking. The referee played on as Coutinho advanced down the left, drawing players towards him, like Koch, who didn’t spot Klich was still miles upfield and Rodrigo, as is his habit, had let Ramsey run. Nobody could stop him scoring again once Coutinho put the ball across.

Nobody should pretend this was all part of some four-dimensioned masterplan. In El Loco’s ideal world, his teams never concede. But letting the match off the leash for the first half seemed to work better for Leeds in the tightened up second. James’ second goal was just seconds before half-time, although Villa squeezed in a big chance for their fourth before the whistle. How to proceed at 3-2 seemed more difficult for the Clarets to fathom than the Blues. Coutinho put one spicy nutmeg on Ayling to haunt his dreams but never got the space back to do more damage; Villa reinterpreted Gerrard’s stingless wish in a pale version of Newcastlesque clockwork, protesting for free-kicks and injuries; Mings still looked terrified of Dan James. Their match up was a clear victory for the little guy, who for ten minutes in the first half caused Mings so much ball-losing panic the home crowd were screaming at defenders to just get rid. Perhaps James doesn’t have the natural goalscoring instincts of Allan Clarke in his prime, but his attacking energy is more than aimless enthusiasm, it can set the tone for the team and disrupt the opposition’s ideas of keeping calm. It wasn’t James directly who worried Mings into laying up a corner for Diego Llorente to smash in Leeds’ equaliser, but it was knowing Mings was very capable of such self-inflicted panics that made James the perfect choice at nine.

Aston Villa don’t really have anything to play for this season beyond finishing place prize money and letting Coutinho have a nice time on his break from real football. That despite their chance for a holiday mood they didn’t want a game like this was clear not only from Gerrard’s post-match ruefulness, but from Ezri Konsa sticking a forearm across Illan Meslier’s face to block a quick clearance and getting his second yellow card. From capitalising on the first half space to take a commanding lead, to smashing a goalkeeper to protect a point they don’t really need, Villa have a hard case to argue they were ever out of Leeds’ sights in this game. And as entertainment it was so much better for being played Leeds United’s way. This should be flipped: with Villa’s mid-table freedom and the talents of Coutinho and Buendia combining, there’s nothing stopping them from living every match to its fullest carefree. Instead we always have to rely on Leeds for that. Relegation threatened, under pressure, desperate Leeds, who while six points from the relegation places can still turn up to cause fun. That’s not naivety, that’s what I want when cameras go swinging here and there over a well kept lawn, following a £125 ball for no reason I can think of better than the pleasure in it.