If Leeds U23s lost but nobody noticed, did they really lose? - The Square Ball 22/3/22

FROZEN FC

Written by: Rob Conlon

If, like me, you spent your weekend avoiding football while your heart rate was settling after Friday night, you might have missed Leeds Under-23s’ 1-0 defeat to Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on Sunday.

What remains of Frozen FC is apparently still allowed to run an U23s team. At recent academy fixtures Chelsea have given away food and drink to fans as government sanctions have blocked sales of concessions. Chelsea’s takeover is yet to be completed, so there’s still time for the government to ban them from playing Liquidator as a team of kids destined to be farmed out to the Eredivisie are walking onto the pitch.

The game itself has been football’s equivalent to the question about whether a tree makes a sound if nobody is there to hear it. The full ninety is yet to have been posted on either LUTV or Chelsea’s websites. Leeds Live and the Yorkshire Evening Post have let reports and reaction slip down their pages while fans are still trying to piece together the first team’s night at Molineux.

Here’s what we do know about Sunday afternoon. Chelsea’s Thierno Ballo spent the first half of the season playing in the Austrian Bundesliga and Europa League for Rapid Wien. If Ballo leaves West London when his contract expires in the summer, he will be trying to find a seventh club by the age of twenty, with no senior appearances for Chelsea to show for it. He scored the only goal of the game early on after Leeds continued their trend of conceding following a pass into space down the wing and a cut-back to an unmarked player in the box. When club staff talk about wanting Leeds to play in the same way throughout the age groups, I’m not sure this is what they mean.

Aside from Dani van den Heuvel making a superb save to prevent a tap in, the highlights show Leeds creating the more dangerous chances throughout the rest of the match. Stuart McKinstry, Archie Gray and Amari Miller were trying to inspire Leeds, playing behind striker Max Dean, but their finishing was ugly.

The first team benefited from getting Jacko in and playing the kids against Wolves, but that impacted the U23s’ preparations for Chelsea. Nohan Kenneh has resisted the temptation of immediately retiring to end his perfect Leeds career with zero appearances and one yellow card, and was one of the kids’ best players after the comedown from the party in Wolverhampton. Kristoffer Klaesson, Charlie Cresswell and Sam Greenwood all missed the game after unexpected appearances for the first team. Crysencio Summerville wasn’t risked with Raphinha testing positive from Covid and a Netherlands Under-21s camp to get through unharmed.

Lewis Bate faced his former club despite struggling through the week with a knee injury he suffered against Scum. He was substituted in the second half after getting injured again in a fifty-fifty challenge. In his first press conference Jesse Marsch identified players carrying on through knocks as one of the reasons Leeds have struggled with so many injuries this season, which is why I’m so confused that he keeps doing the same thing.

“It’s been an intense week, but we’ve got to stand up to that as a group,” interim boss Andrew Taylor told LUTV. “I’ve just said to the lads we’ve got to have players with real pitch personality that believe, that demand from themselves and from players around them, and want to affect the game. I think at times today it was almost as if we were waiting for something to happen rather than one, two, three, four players making something happen. I thought Jack Jenkins was great, he put in a really good performance. I thought Nohan stood up to the challenge, but we just need a little bit more.”

Namechecking Jenkins shows why it can be so hard to judge U23s football. Jenkins lacks the technical ability of Bate or Gray to produce moments that are going to do the rounds on Twitter, but obviously has something that makes him an automatic choice — and often the captain — in the team.

Chelsea’s win means they can now overtake Leeds in the table should they win either of their games in hand. Leeds remain in a relegation battle in Premier League 2 Division One, but can take encouragement from their run of four games without defeat prior to visiting Stamford Bridge. There are plenty of teams directly above and below Leeds still to play each other before the end of the season, which could help Taylor’s team move up the table and away from trouble. Even if they can’t, should the grown ups keep embracing the chaos to escape their own relegation battle, we’re going to be too worn out to get upset with the kids.