Leeds United are deserving what they get - The Square Ball 11/4/22

FOR WHAT FOLKS WILL DO

Written by: Rob Conlon

There is a rose-tinted view of Leeds United’s football under Marcelo Bielsa. It wasn’t always beautiful. Of Bielsa’s 170 matches in charge, Leeds lost or drew eight games more than they won. There were matches when for all Leeds’ attacking, they forgot to score. There were matches when for all the opposition struggled to get out of their own half, Leeds gifted them a goal. There was Wigan. There was Nottingham Forest. There was this season.

But even when Leeds’ players couldn’t do what Bielsa was asking of them, there were usually ten or fifteen minutes when the game stopped being a Championship or Premier League fixture and turned into public murderball, and it was beautiful. But as more members of Leeds’ squad swapped the training pitch for Rob Price’s treatment room, the less we saw of those moments. We got glimpses, but often Leeds had already let the result pass them by.

I was thinking about one of those fifteen minute spells, against Leicester at home in November, after Saturday’s 3-0 win over Watford. Leeds drew with Leicester, 1-1. The goals were scored in the first half. Later Leeds began bewildering their opposition, straight from kick-off after the break. Their fifteen minutes of domination started with Jack Harrison defying physics to knee the ball over Leicester’s crossbar while standing on the goalline, and ended with Stuart Dallas charging down the right wing, lifting his head, and arcing a deep cross into the six-yard box, perfect for Rodrigo’s left boot. Rodrigo volleyed wide.

The chances were missed, but Bielsa was happy with a “very beautiful game” in which he recognised his Leeds team for the first time this season. Leeds United were daring to be brilliant. Even though they failed, I wrote: ‘When Leeds are as good as they were for those fifteen minutes, why would you want to watch anyone else?’

It was still Leeds I was watching on Saturday, but it looked like a different team. Jackie Harrison didn’t need to miss from a yard out when he could score from twenty. Rodrigo didn’t need the help of a Dallas cross when he had Watford’s defenders giving him through balls to score from. Leeds didn’t need to settle for a draw when they could celebrate a win. Jesse Marsch said it wasn’t very good for the second game in a row, and Leeds were praised by Danny Murphy and Neil Warnock.

Before Leeds played Brentford in December, Marcelo Bielsa said that it’s more important to deserve what you get rather than get what you deserve. If you don’t deserve what you get, “the path is not the right one”, and you will eventually start getting what you deserve:

“What’s really significant is what you obtain or what you deserve. Because if what’s deserved is not obtained, the path is the correct one, and if what’s obtained is not deserved, the path is not the right one. And in both cases time verifies those things — and the only thing I’m saying is that what corresponds is to deserve what you get.”

Those words are why Bielsa, always fair and logical, is doomed in a cruel sport run by chancers. It’s also why I’m really struggling to work out how I feel about Leeds right now, when they can give the ball to an opposition player almost as many times as they give the ball to a teammate and still be rewarded with three points. For all the mistakes made at every level of the club, including by Bielsa, this is the season Leeds budgeted for 17th after finishing 9th and swapped daring to be brilliant for copying Southampton. Leeds beat Watford, and we don’t deserve to get relegated and Watford do.