Leicester City 1-0 Leeds United: All press, no stress - The Square Ball 6/3/22

BE THE CHANGE

Written by: Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman

Photos on social media showed Marcelo Bielsa walking the streets of Wetherby on Saturday morning, apparently avoiding Leeds United’s game at Leicester on television. How has it come to this, that Marcelo Bielsa, of all people, doesn’t want to watch a game of football?

Maybe it was his way of getting out of the way. If anybody asks what he thought of Jesse Marsch’s debut in the technical area, he can tell them, ‘Sincerely, I did not see it.’ The stonewashed jeans? ‘I insist, I did not see.’

Everyone else was watching. It’s been years since a Leeds teamsheet was so anticipated, since a game kicked off without certainty about how Leeds will play. The tactical expectations were met, Leeds dropping the man marking, funnelling into 4-2-2-2, inverting wingers and attacks while keeping Leicester City — Jamie Vardy included — away from goal. There were dangerous moments, because no system is perfect, particularly one that’s new. You could see the speed of change outpacing performance when players were marking space, their arms wide, appealing for somebody to press the blue shirt on the ball; you can’t adapt completely in four days. The winning goal felt like a throwback: Leicester had the Stuart Dallas-Luke Ayling side of defence in their sights all game, as they would whoever was our manager, and Harvey Barnes burst onto a one-two for his routine goal against Leeds.

The new Leeds held promise. Leicester’s goal didn’t come until the 67th minute, rather than the 67th second. Marsch’s work is about being nicer to our players while making them meaner to everybody else. It was working, while the minutes turned into an hour without conceding, but I was also denied my one regular balm, an Illan Meslier wondersave. At one point Luke Ayling even took a goal kick for him. What will my romantic spider boy be doing if he’s not got as much to do? It’s probably not healthy when a goalkeeper is a leading candidate for player of the season, especially if they have also conceded 61 goals. But without much need for his hands, Meslier had to crack out two Cruyff turns to keep up his part of the wow factor.

The actual player of the match was the Foxy goalkeeper, Kasper Schmeichel, and if he wasn’t so belligerent or Leeds were a little more emphatic this game could have been won. Salvation is feeling less like Marsch’s to bestow, more like Pat Bamford’s gift to give. It shouldn’t be. Meeting Junior Firpo’s low cross in the six yard box, Raphinha couldn’t channel his frustration through his feet, the ball, the net, letting Schmeichel block his sidefoot. Rodrigo couldn’t have done much more with his flicked header on a corner that the keeper clawed away, but he could have done more in the rest of the match. With two starting up front, Joe Gelhardt’s finishing should be getting on the pitch sooner rather than later, but Marsch also seems to like Dan James there. With a focus on attacking the penalty spot and players like Firpo popping up to shoot from a rebound (that was blocked), we have the possibility of more players in the box scoring more goals. They seem to be waiting for Bamford to go first, though.

Overall, Marsch’s assessment was right: “Quite good.” The other big change to come will be Kalvin Phillips’ comeback. Leeds played with a double pivot of Mateusz Klich and Robin Koch, an attacking midfielder and a generalised ‘back’. Phillips has become such a specialist in this part of the field that he did the job of two for Bielsa, and we have suffered badly without him; he also has experience from England of playing like this alongside Declan Rice. We have to hope he can come back soon and, as one of two, dominate. United’s first objective was met at Leicester: reduce the carnage in our half of the pitch. The next objectives are about getting wins and lifting the quality with players like Bamford and Phillips, preferably doing the first without waiting for the second.

Some things didn’t add up. United’s season has been defined by injuries, and Bielsa has been blamed for them along a scale from over exertion in training to reckless endangerment. Marsch spoke this week about managing minutes, about players being re-injured this season during rushed recoveries, as if it’s something he’s determined to change. He also said there is plenty of time left in the campaign so no need to panic. Why, then, if as Marsch said Bamford was only fit to play ten minutes, was he put on the bench at Leicester? He was there in case of — what? What situation, as we avoid panicking twelve games from the end, would have meant throwing a barely fit Bamford into the last ten minutes? Marsch said he needed to make a change with fourteen minutes to go, and those four minutes meant Tyler Roberts had to come on instead of Bamford. But again, if one of the reasons Marsch is here is to mitigate injuries, why was Roberts left limping around the pitch, causing more damage to the hamstring he strained in a tackle moments after coming on? It wasn’t helping the team, it wasn’t helping Roberts, and worst of all, it made the new boss look indecisive in a game that was always going to mean contrasts with the last guy, with authority as the first test.

The change in system was a given when Bielsa was sacked, because nobody else plays like him. Instead Marsch has emphasised the change in atmosphere. His word of the week — ‘stress’, and how to relieve it — was well chosen, and was repeated by Stuart Dallas in his interview with the BBC on Friday. The players should welcome that, as long as their new touchy-feely world stops short of treating them like feral children raised in the woods, unused to human contact, being given Mickey Mouse wristwatches to bring them into Western society. They have had hugs in the last four years. Bielsa worked them hard and was distant. Marsch will work them hard and be their mate. As glaring as any tactical changes, the post-match centre-circle huddle — once Marsch had herded the players into it — was the difference of the day. That and Andrea Radrizzani, with Pete Lowy still by his side (where has he been all week?), relaxing with his new coach on the pitch before the game, perhaps glad to have a manager he can invite round for dinner and drinks.

Bielsa’s predecessors at Leeds, by stature, were Don Revie and Howard Wilkinson, and this isn’t how they were replaced in 1974 and 1996, although it’s where Leeds went in the end. Wilkinson’s disciplined regime was replaced by George Graham’s, who enforced total defending while his assistant David O’Leary got pally with the squad he would inherit and call his babies. After Revie, the Leeds board went for Brian Clough, who tried to shock the best team in the country into improving on their extraordinary achievements by slagging them off for six weeks. When Jimmy Armfield took over, he concentrated on morale, putting the players into pantomime at City Varieties to relieve the stress, a listening uncle with a pipe in the corner of his mouth, supporting them to the European Cup final. Leeds are skipping the Clough or Graham parts by going straight for an Armfield or O’Leary type. They both worked well for a long while, until they fell victim to something that feels particularly Leeds: people grew tired and distrustful of hearing them being nice.

This season is not about Bielsa anymore, although our hearts will be about him for a long time after May. The rest of this season is about the players who brought us up not letting us down, and it’s on Jesse Marsch to live laugh love Leeds United away from the relegation zone. This week’s message was less stress, but the result was no more points. The coming Thursday, against Aston Villa, and Sunday against Norwich, have been looming significantly for a while. Hopefully fun won’t have to wait a week.