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