Leeds United 2-4 Manchester United: Damned if they do - The Square Ball 21/2/22


ENOUGH?

Written by: Moscowhite • Daniel Chapman

Commitment, heart, effort, fight. Marcelo Bielsa says they’re not enough. The Premier League table says they’re not enough. Another four goals conceded said they’re not enough. The trophy cabinet at Leeds, whose best team thrived on Don Revie’s exhortation to ‘Keep Fighting’, says it’s not enough. But what more can we ask from players who don’t have more to give?

I left Elland Road after this defeat feeling glad I support Leeds United and that Leeds United’s team still has players in it like Luke Ayling, Stuart Dallas and Mateusz Klich, who made stupid mistakes and missed chances and were shown up by their opponents but deserved better than a 4-2 defeat. If this was an apology for the performance at Everton it should be accepted, and I can’t think of much more they could have done to make things right. People worry a lot about our promotion team ‘tarnishing their legacy’, but that’s because people spend too long treating the future as if it is already history. None of these players are diminished in my eyes for not having as good a season as the last three, because their characters haven’t changed, their effort hasn’t gone, they’ve brought nothing but credit to Leeds United in a way that shouldn’t disappear just because they lose some games. That Stuart Dallas was coached at Leeds by Steve Evans says something about his career at the time, as well as about our club back then. Nobody could ever imagine how thin the line could be between Evans and Marcelo Bielsa. When you remember that, it’s easy to stay humble, whether as a player or a fan. We should worry more about forgetting our real history and less about being a Nostradamus of legacies. I’m not thinking about how I’ll look back on Mateusz Klich when I’m staring right at him. I’m just wishing he would shoot harder and hoping next time he will.

In some ways Manchester United were the perfect opponent to follow last week’s game, because the minimum required from a Roses derby is exceptionally high. In other ways it was the worst possible, because the Premier League’s financial rigging makes the result we got very hard to avoid. Not
impossible, though, which makes the goals conceded so frustrating. Harry Maguire opened the scoring by heading in a corner, the way so many dire individuals have against Leeds, finding no resistance in Diego Llorente as he surged towards the cross. For the second, Leeds left themselves too open, and were too slow to react to too many world class players rushing into the penalty area: Bruno Fernandes headed in Jadon Sancho’s cross. The third, after a fightback and a near-miss by Leeds, punished Junior Firpo’s sodden hesitation; Manchester found pass after pass until they were close enough to shoot. The fourth was just pain, Pascal Struijk’s great match ending in a tired error.

Name a long-term flaw about Leeds United and Manchester found it, with salt and pepper for the wound. But this is the way against teams near the top of the Premier League. They don’t care what sort of mistake you make, they can punish it. Manchester United, apparently suffering through some dreadful sort of season, have won half their games; the situation above them is even more crushing, Chelsea on 56% wins, Liverpool 67%, Manchester City winning 20 of their 26 matches. After taking a surprise lead at Anfield on Saturday, Norwich were forced behind the ball, all eleven of them crammed in their final third where Jordan Henderson kept sending his nine outfield teammates, over and over until they scored one, two, three. The Canaries couldn’t have tried harder to keep tight, and so much for that idea by the end. Supporters of bottom half clubs torture themselves with debates about tactics and systems. The drop in quality from the top means you’re often just deciding which way to lose.

That becomes a question of pride, and to some people that means miserly play, low figures in the goals against column, staying in a contest and hoping. It has merit. I’m not sure it has the results. My tastes align more with what I got from Leeds this weekend, which felt more like the derbies I grew up watching. The tackles flying in, the crowd roaring, the villains in red play-acting, the heroes in white attacking. And Leeds losing. Our sorry record against them isn’t unique to Bielsa’s post-promotion team. Historically we’ve won 26, drawn 36 and lost 49. I don’t know if we’d hate them as much if we won more often. Call it an inferiority complex if you like, but part of the treasure of our victories over them is how they come against the odds.

Against the odds, the croupier, the loaded deck and the whole damn casino, Leeds nearly shoved this game into classic territory. Illan Meslier got Leeds through their first scare, an exceptional save from Cristiano Ronaldo at two yards’ distance and a millisecond’s notice. They were 2-0 down at half-time anyway, after spirited effort was undone by two sloppy goals and the inevitable early injury, this time done to Robin Koch’s head by the apparently unpunishable Scott McTominay. Bielsa untethered two forwards and sent Leeds out to attack the second half. Joe Gelhardt changed the emphasis, inviting passes behind the centre-backs from Rodrigo, who was much better for dropping deeper. Nothing dropped deeper or sweeter than Rodrigo’s mishit cross, looping over David De Gea into the top corner; or Bruno Fernandes, who within twenty seconds of that was dumped on the floor, waving his hand like a drowning man after Adam Forshaw started the archetypal Bielsa goal, stealing the ball high, Dan James getting it, crossing it, Raphinha arriving unmarked, and undecided after scoring whether to do his angry act for being dropped or his happy one for the goal. I think the noise from the four sides of Elland Road meant he never quite made his mind up, he just went with the flow.

The two goals were separated by 24 seconds and the delirium of the minutes either side had a brain-tilting quality not easily achieved outside a football match. These moments are tied to our identity with Bielsa. First, because the singular experience of joy through football is something he particularly thinks about:

> “[In football] We always earn a lot of money and [then] we think about the impact our jobs have on the hopes of humble people. It’s harder for poor people to have access to another kind of happiness than football, or to have opportunities to feel proud of things, like they do about their club.”

Secondly, because Forshaw flooring Fernandes for Leeds to score can’t happen if he’s told to drop deep and defend. A feature of Norwich’s struggle at Anfield on Saturday was that, camped in their own box, they couldn’t even try to tackle. Leeds were ferocious against Manchester, to Elland Road’s old-school delight, because they were so determined to attack them.

The sleet and gale felt ideal for what Leeds were trying to do. Forshaw had been excellent, but simultaneously bossed about by Paul Pogba. Ten minutes after the equaliser the game still had its own temperature, and it had Forshaw crashing into Aaron Wan-Bissaka, unwisely wandering upfield, and Junior Firpo into Anthony Elanga, who he sent spinning. Manchester’s entire left side was on the floor in Leeds’ half and Dan James, who had chased back for the first bite at Wan-Bissaka before Forshaw finished him, sprinted into their space with the ball, and with Gelhardt, who gave it to overlapping Firpo, whose cross whiffed past James’ head by some raindrop margin in the six yard box. Dallas won the ball back, Ayling gave it to Firpo again, and the conditions turned heel as he fell victim to an unfriendly puddle. The ball didn’t bounce, Fernandes pounced, there were red shirts over and over and not enough in Leeds’ legs to chase them. Fred scored, 3-2, and that was the thanks Leeds got for trying.

The game was not over but it was much harder, not least because Scott McTominay and Luke Shaw had somehow got through without bookings and had more pent-up gamesmanship in reserve. The speed with which Raphinha was booked for his first syllable of complaint to the referee about McTominay clattering into Firpo, two minutes after the Manchester player’s long-awaited 77th minute yellow card for hacking down Gelhardt, said a lot about how easy it was for one set of players to be booked. Shaw’s name wasn’t taken until stoppage time, when he was free to turn Firpo’s tackle on Elanga into a brawl and get a yellow for the Leeds player for being shouted at.

If that sounds bitter I want it to. There’s nothing sweet about losing to them, however it happens. Let me take my petty grievances away with me, and my pride in what Leeds did do, on a day they were always likely to end up damned whatever they did. They did what they could and that had to be enough. This Leeds team are who they are, and only time will get them closer to the top four of the Premier League, by spending their share of the annual turn of broadcasting income’s shovel. We all hope this process will work quickly and well, but after games like this I remember there are things I don’t want to lose. Matches to Manchester United, that’s one thing. Our soul is another.

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