Leeds need their most dependable match-winners more than ever - The Athletic 21/2/22

By Phil Hay

A free header — what else? — for Harry Maguire and, as Manchester United’s captain goaded Elland Road by sliding on his knees, Raphinha leaned on a corner flag behind him, staring at the ground with his face as dour as the weather.

It was turning into one of those weeks for Raphinha: replaced at half-time in a drubbing by Everton and then dropped to the bench for Manchester United at home, the biggest date on Leeds United’s calendar. He and Marcelo Bielsa spoke privately in midweek about the decision to sacrifice the Brazilian early at Goodison Park but Bielsa’s mind was made up about what to do next and his starting line-up on Sunday was sans Raphinha.

It’s the collective with Bielsa, always the collective, and even in the face of a footballer so good.

Maguire’s header for 1-0 was followed by a Bruno Fernandes one for 2-0 before half-time but in the corner where Maguire was puffing his chest out in the 34th minute, Raphinha was doing likewise early in the second half after a fightback so quick the statisticians timed it at 24 seconds.

First, Rodrigo’s 53rd-minute cross slid off the outside of his left boot and arced perfectly inside David de Gea’s far post. Then, as Elland Road feasted on the swing in impetus its sanity needed, Raphinha picked his run and swept in a gift from six yards.

Mayhem ensued and mayhem was why Leeds’ ground was awash with stewards and a huge police presence, all of them ready for anything as the stadium rekindled a deep and sometimes poisonous rivalry.

Like that, 2-0 had become 2-2 and it was clear that Bielsa’s introductions of Raphinha and Joe Gelhardt from the bench at the start of the second half were the right decisions at the right time, the only means of making Leeds accelerate like a train. However devoted Leeds are to turning the cogs as a unit of 11 — and neither of their goals in yesterday’s 4-2 defeat had one single hand in them — there was something to be gained from individual presence; from the arrival of names who looked like they might turn a potentially lost cause.

It was all for nothing after Dan James failed to connect with a diving header and Manchester United broke upfield immediately to take a 3-2 lead but the substitutions were what Leeds were looking for. Raphinha and Gelhardt were sparks at a juncture when no one else seemed to be.

Sparks are what Leeds are searching for endlessly, without finding one which stays alight. Watching them this season is like waiting for someone to take a hammer to the ice above them.

There are different ways in which Bielsa could attempt to steer his team out of trouble but some seem more plausible than others.

Bringing to heel a defensive record which ran to 50 league goals conceded when Anthony Elanga put Manchester United’s win beyond doubt in the 88th minute would help no end, but there is nothing to suggest that Leeds’ porous hide is likely to heal soon or that, without the injured Kalvin Phillips, Bielsa has an easy way of making it happen.

Diego Llorente lost Maguire at a corner for Manchester United’s first goal and Fernandes was free to head in their second. Fred and Elanga claimed the others with shots from the left channel, unopposed and free to pick their spot behind a defence which is probably past the point of shoring up, in this season at least.

Bielsa was on to his third different holding midfielder of the day by then but, as he said himself, Leeds’ frailty cannot entirely be blamed on one player or one position. It is a structural weakness in which players are drawn out and then bypassed, wrecking their shape in the process.

To that end, it could almost have been said that Raphinha’s exclusion from the starting line-up or, more accurately, the desire to add Adam Forshaw to the midfield and create something a little closer to a pair in front of the back four was based in logic.

Manchester United had run a coach and horses through the centre circle in both of Leeds’ previous games at Old Trafford and as a 0-0 draw at Elland Road last season showed, there was no harm or shame in asking them to graft harder. It was good for 25 minutes on Sunday, but a head wound accounted for Robin Koch, leading to a change that caused four positional switches. Cracks opened and Maguire and Fernandes infiltrated them. The game looked gone at half-time, only for the tide to turn dramatically.

All of which feeds a conclusion which has been building for months: that Leeds need their most dependable match-winners more than ever, and that the inability of some of their biggest players, through injury or dipping form, to unload on the Premier League as they did last year has given them too few shoulders to lean on.

Leaving Raphinha out, Bielsa said, was a call which “can happen throughout a season” and it could not be said that Raphinha had looked like vintage Raphinha in either of Leeds’ previous two matches but it is players like him who have to flourish if Leeds are to grab their run-in by the throat. In a scenario where his side are having to score three, four or five times to win a game, Bielsa can do little more than look to the players most likely to make that happen. In no small way it means squeezing everything he can out of his Raphinhas.

This latest defeat was the campaign as Leeds have known it from the start, from the moment when Luke Ayling’s equaliser at Old Trafford on the opening weekend became a 5-1 deficit before the goal had resonated.

Those 24 seconds at the start of yesterday’s second half were what people in Leeds had been saying about Elland Road all week: let the ground get its claws into you and it will, with venom. The injection of confidence ran through everyone but another potential turning point slid away and in clutching for a position of outright safety — so close and so reachable for such a long time now — Leeds can feel only the sensation of clutching sand, however hard they dig.

“To not fight would be a worrying sign,” Bielsa said, reassured that his team had done that. “But it’s not the only thing you need.”

The intangible ability to make everything OK remains beyond his reach.