How comfortable will Leeds be when they face Norwich on March 12? - The Athletic 14/2/22


By Phil Hay

Next up for Leeds United? The small matter of Manchester United at home, either the right game at the right time or bad timing all round. Leeds have waited almost 20 years for that fixture to return to Elland Road with supporters free to exchange pleasantries face-to-face, but the pick of their fixture list runs the risk of making their lives worse.

It was apparent on the first day of this season, away at Old Trafford as goals flowed past Illan Meslier, that Leeds would not be basing another safe Premier League finish on results against the division’s stronger teams. But having given themselves a punchbag’s chance at Everton on Saturday, beating the odds will be necessary in the next fortnight. Next up is Manchester United and after that, Liverpool away and Tottenham at home. Even Leicester City on March 5 poses the question of how comfortable Leeds can expect to be when they host Norwich City a week later.

Too good to go down? For all the problems this season, it has generally looked that way. Leeds could stagger through a 7-0 battering at Manchester City and remind themselves that in the head-to-heads that mattered, the games that influenced the section of the table they were in, they were taking points from clubs around them and below them. Do that and trouble never finds you. But suddenly they are losing the games that weigh heaviest, against Newcastle last month and Everton this weekend. Teams who badly need results are cashing in at Leeds’ expense.

Leeds as they were at Aston Villa last Wednesday have a strong enough foothold in the Premier League. Leeds at Everton were a side who looked like they were sliding around on ice. The whole premise of Saturday — that Everton were flaky, that Goodison Park might turn sour and give Frank Lampard the shortest honeymoon in history — fell apart in a downpour of trademark inadequacies. There’s something about Leeds that makes the fate of individual games visible in the earliest minutes: ponderous starts leading to defeats and vice versa, and Saturday was one of those. Everton, to their relief, found opposition worse than them, for one day at least.

It would be worth dissecting a 3-0 defeat at Goodison Park in detail if so much of it was not a case of retracing old ground. Leeds had no midfield in the first half because Leeds too often have no midfield, defensively or as they try to develop attacks. Everton had sharper teeth but Marcelo Bielsa’s players made them expend a minimal amount of sweat for a 2-0 lead at half-time, because cracking Leeds’ defence is no Rubik’s cube. Tyler Roberts coming on for Raphinha at half-time confirmed again that picking Roberts over Joe Gelhardt is a hill Bielsa is quite prepared to fight on and die on. Playing Mateusz Klich in front of a back three was an error, Bielsa admitted, because Klich has attacking vibes in his bones. But it was not as if bright lights were needed to explain the virtues of Adam Forshaw.

Complicated, convoluted and costly on a day when Leeds could have soothed their anxiety. Bielsa doesn’t play the percentages as a coach, but it was an afternoon of so many tangled threads, and more difficult a result to defend than Newcastle’s 1-0 win at Elland Road. Newcastle went through the motions with very little coherence until Jonjo Shelvey’s free kick slipped off Meslier’s gloves. Everton ran the show and sensed that either they dragged Goodison Park with them or asked Goodison Park to give up on them. There were tackles, there was palpable devotion and presence from players like Donny van de Beek, a midfielder Bielsa scratched off the list of potential signings at Leeds last month. Deep down you wonder if in this world Van de Beek would have been left on Bielsa’s bench anyway.

Outside Goodison Park, in the hours before kick-off, there was tension within Everton’s support, nervous conversations near the ticket office about where their next win was coming from. The nuts and bolts of the performance Everton delivered and the result it earned could guide Leeds when Manchester United walk through the door next weekend. Manchester United, under Ralf Rangnick, are not a 90-minute team. They are not much like Manchester United teams of the past who were conditioned to soak up everything Elland Road threw at them. Feet in, swarming the ball, looking like it matters — the basic things worked for Everton, and Leeds need productive heat around them on Sunday, without the lid lifting so far that it provokes things like the couple of bottles that were thrown from Goodison’s away end at Seamus Coleman.

Frustration was brewing by then, caused by Coleman heading in after 10 minutes and Michael Keane heading in after 23. Rodrigo pinged two marvellous efforts off Everton’s crossbar, both from outside the box, but imagination like that was shoehorned into a pile of mediocrity. Richarlison’s shot 12 minutes from the end, deflecting in off Anthony Gordon, ended a contest that had looked like going Everton’s way from the moment Gordon’s second-minute run behind Bielsa’s defence provoked a lunging sliding tackle from Luke Ayling. The signs were there, clear as day.

So to the positives on the road ahead: Manchester United are identity-less and going through endless rounds of introspection, none of it leading anywhere fast. Liverpool away is a rearranged game Leeds were hardly set up for on Boxing Day. Bielsa ran Antonio Conte close before Christmas and Tottenham have been in and out for several weeks. As for dispatches from elsewhere on Saturday, Watford were booed off at home and Norwich were taken apart by Manchester City. No consolation at all for them in the events at Goodison Park, other than to know that Leeds are still not free of the punch-up at the bottom.

Routinely when Leeds lose, everything homes in on the Roberts versus Gelhardt debate — why Bielsa sways one way more than the other and why Gelhardt finds it harder to get off the bench. They are valid questions, based on potential and impact, but they have been elevated up the agenda by the regularity with which Bielsa finds himself looking for solutions mid-match. On the subject of how best to turn a game, it would be better for Leeds if they were having to turn fewer of them; if a trip to Everton did not mean Klich and Raphinha disposed of at half-time and Bielsa pushed into salvage mode. Grievances flare up more readily when substitutes are being pitched into games that are going wrong, when collective form is so flimsy. The desperation for Gelhardt grows because Gelhardt is a rare player. But it grows too because Leeds are quite often desperate.


However they got here, through two withdrawn transfer windows, injuries and a stretch of stop-start results, it must surely be apparent to Bielsa and the club that too much more of this will catch up on them. Survival is very probable still but if it comes, next season cannot follow the same trends. The sole objective now is to find a seat in the musical chairs and think lucidly about why the going has been so heavy. Everton landed a gimme at Goodison at a time of the season when no struggling club expects one.

Leeds are left to dig up trees of their own, against considerably better opposition.

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