Everton 3-0 Leeds United: Lose once, lose twice - The Square Ball 13/2/22

LONG STORY

Written by: Moscowhite • Daniel Chapman

Leeds United were defeated two ways by Everton at Goodison Park.

First they lost the ninety minutes. Frank Lampard sent Everton out with two strikers, so Marcelo Bielsa set Leeds up with three central defenders — two markers, one spare — as he always does. The hitch was that Mateusz Klich was asked to anchor midfield, and Bielsa said this was his most significant mistake of the day. “Sincerely I assigned a task to him that didn’t fit his characteristics,” he said. Adam Forshaw replaced him at half-time and Leeds found some stability, but at 2-0 down they needed more than that. Another apparent mistake, not acknowledged, was relying on the same eleven that played at Aston Villa, even after Bielsa’s pre-match discussion of the degrading impact of playing games so frequently close together, which looked well spoken after their tired show. Mid-game changes in attack didn’t help, though, Dan James fading when he moved to Raphinha’s place on the wing, Rodrigo less dangerous in attack with Tyler Roberts working with him than in the first half, when he’d pinged the crossbar twice with brilliant long range shots. Two extra dips of six inches each would have got Leeds to half-time in a different mood.

Two different players would have made a significant difference too, as the attack was desperate for Pat Bamford’s ability to hold the ball there, and the midfield cried for Kalvin Phillips. Three central defenders always makes Leeds look uncomfortable, but when The Athletic ran the numbers back in October the formation had earned Bielsa’s Leeds 2.41 points per game since 2018, compared to a back four’s 1.55 points; the caveats were that the other measurements, mainly creativity for and against, point to worse overall performances, and the formation’s usual use is against weaker teams. That survey was inspired by the dreadful defeat at Southampton, when Klich was isolated in midfield, etc etc, the same as at Goodison Park. The lesson, then, seems to be that three at the back works if Kalvin Phillips, £100m worth of midfield dominance, is in the team. I can only guess that Bielsa was hoping Klich, in an overall stronger line up than at St Mary’s, where there was no Raphinha or Luke Ayling, and with support from Robin Koch after his impressive recent games, would cope better this time.

Phillips could have done more about Everton’s impressive version of the Peacocks’ pressing, enforcing the space in front of the defence, where Klich’s attempts to keep or win possession turned into tackles on him or fouls by him. There was nothing to discourage Everton from camping high, blocking passes, forcing mistakes and rather than dictating the play — Leeds had more possession — dictating the mood. Problems grew in the ninth minute when Stuart Dallas went off injured, another experienced player sitting out, and Alex Iwobi’s bright start turned into governing freedom as he dragged Leo Hjelde across midfield, Anthony Gordon doing the same with Ayling on the other side. This probably explained the decision to take Raphinha off at half-time; Ayling needed the energetic help of James. The opening goal came soon after Dallas had gone off, from left-back Jonjoe Kenny beating Raphinha and sending a cross over; Everton collected the ball and left-back Seamus Coleman beat Jackie Harrison on the right and joined the attack. Gordon had moved to that side, bringing confusion with him, and Coleman’s advance beyond Harrison forced Klich towards him, thinking Rodrigo had taken over marking Donny van der Beek. He hadn’t, so van der Beek was free in the box to send a low cross meant for Dominic Calvert-Lewin that rebounded into scruffy air where Coleman dived in ahead of Klich.

Leeds never looked good, but the game was not impossible at 1-0. As against Aston Villa, Rodrigo put himself in charge, sending James into the penalty area where he succumbed to Mason Holgate’s excellent tackle, hitting the bar himself with a superb volley, dictating Klich and Harrison into a good position to cross that Harrison overhit by miles. Then Michael Keane forced himself through two defenders to score from Lampard’s most reliable route to goal with Everton so far, a set-piece, and United’s attempts to get back into the match were forlorn. The stale second half was punctuated by a success for Everton’s press with twelve minutes left, forcing Illan Meslier into a clearance that was quickly returned for Richarlison deflecting a shot off Gordon to make it 3-0. In stoppage time Meslier stopped Salomón Rondón’s volley being a fourth goal with an incredible strong-handed save, Leeds’ goalkeeper as usual the best player regardless of the goals that have gone in.

That was the match, then. The other defeat was in the narrative, and in 2022 that comes with the higher cost. Bielsa’s Leeds at their best, for example on Wednesday at Villa Park, can turn on a game that’s so good you forget about league tables, transfer windows, coaching legacies, recruitment models. But narrative is the currency of modern football and they all came crashing down on Leeds at Goodison Park. This was Frank Lampard Junior’s home league debut against the coach he somehow cast as a villain in the illicit scouting drama he manufactured in the media back in 2019. “A lot has happened since then,” Lampard said before the game. “I’ve got, actually, complete respect for Marcelo Bielsa,” as if Lampard’s respect was something Bielsa had earned back. Everton fans had painted walls begging for Lampard to be their new manager, same as they decorated streets with death threats near houses they wrongly believed were home to Rafa Benitez, and this was his home league debut. The enmity with Leeds and the need to get Goodison on side combined to produce all the effort that was absent from their 3-1 midweek defeat in Newcastle, and from the preceding fifteen games, only one of which was won, only three of which were drawn. At St James’ Park, at 3-1 down, the Premier League cameras didn’t show Lampard once. At 3-0 up against Leeds, his smirking face was hardly off the screen. Everyone got the Valentines headlines they wanted about the dawn of Lampard’s new era, as if the match at Newcastle happened while everyone was still asleep.

In midfield Everton paraded Donny van der Beek, a player Bielsa turned down on loan, while United’s midfield was haunted by absence not of Phillips but of van der Beek, Brenden Aaronson, all the players they didn’t sign who would, in the imagination, have changed this game. Joe Gelhardt has that imaginary quality too, the popular kid everyone dreams of being the Roy of the Rovers hero, a Liverpool fan rejected in boyhood by both Merseyside clubs destined to score a match-saving and relegation-avoiding hat-trick against the Toffees. Tyler Roberts came on, ostensibly instead, somehow a bigger villain to Leeds fans than any opposition player. Van der Beek, a Manchester United player on loan having his debut for Everton, got more love from LS11. Once it was known that Bielsa had rejected him, his best performance in two years was narratively inevitable, something to throw in the face of Leeds’ manager.

Then there’s relegation, the big story. Leeds have fifteen games left to play this season, but losing to Everton prompted a resumption of the bodyless post-mortems that have been happening online since around game eight, that defeat at Southampton. Three weeks ago, after the league wins over Burnley and West Ham United, talk brightened towards another year of Bielsa in next season’s Premier League after some simple summer rebuilding. Three games later 2021/22 is back to being a failure at the two-thirds stage, and even if relegation is avoided by whatever margin we can apparently no longer call that success, and the blame right now is fierce for things that, if they’re going to happen, are still more than three months away.

To me it seems like an unusual response to the last two years of the pandemic’s enforced stillness, this wishing away of our next hundred days of living, discovery, curiosity, just because a game was lost. But two years of indoor life have also enforced the grip of social media, its farming of judgements as grist to tech stock prices. This activity, of typing anger into a phone, is supposed to be cathartic, but just prolongs misery because all anyone wants to hear online is their opinion echoing back to them, impossible given Twitter’s scale, so every minor point of difference becomes an argument, leaving all involved feeling worse (and if you think conducting online arguments is making you feel better, I think you need to check that). Being a football fan is being distorted this way into bizarre self-loathing where instead of hating the other team for beating our favourite team, we hate the team we love for losing. And because we can’t invert emotions and love the other team for winning, we end up just hating everything about football. When it comes to Donny van der Beek, I don’t want to hate Leeds United for not signing him. For playing so well against Leeds, van der Beek is the the bastard whose picture belongs on the dartboard.

If all narrative conclusions have been drawn before the last third of the season is played, football’s not a game anymore, it’s just fodder for an online anger ventilation service for airing pre-judgements and having their acrid smoke blown back down your throat. On Sunday morning after Saturday’s Everton 3-0 Leeds game, I feel quite sure Marcelo Bielsa and the Leeds players woke up feeling as terrible about it as me, while Frank Lampard Junior slept off the red wine hangover until he could get on the phone crowing to the smug circle of bastards he calls friends. I only want to be angry about one side of this. I hope Everton lose next week, I hope next season we beat them twice, and I hope their new stadium construction sinks into the sea, and takes with it a box of treasured childhood toys Frank Lampard put there for safekeeping. These are my firm decisions. About that and everything else, though, I’ll have to wait and see what happens.