The cleanest sheets: Marsch, Phillips & Gallagher on Palace vs Leeds - The Square Ball 26/4/22

POSITIVE THINKING

Written by: Rob Conlon

You have to go back exactly twelve months to find Leeds United in a better run of form than their current five match unbeaten streak, that began with the 2-1 win against Norwich on March 13th and has continued to Monday night’s 0-0 at Crystal Palace. The same dates last season coincided with Leeds squeezing in three draws and three wins from fixtures involving four of the Super League six and some losers from Fulham and Sheffield United. Those results propelled Leeds into the top half, and — touch wood — this is the run that keeps United in the Premier League so they can do it all again next term.

To find our last consecutive clean sheets before the Palace draw, you have to go back to November, when a 0-0 at Brighton was followed by Rapha’s jaffas getting a late 1-0 win against what were meant to be high-flying Eagles. And do you know who was playing in both of those matches? Well, Junior Firpo and Tyler Roberts. But Kalvin Phillips, that’s who!

Phillips was back in the starting team for the first time since December and was back in front of Sky Sports’ microphones for a post-match interview. Kalvin wasn’t particularly happy, but there were still a couple of flashes of that grin, and I was happy when he called Meslier “Illan the big man”:

“It was a tough game. Personally, I don’t think the team played as well as they could do. Happy with a point but not really happy with the performance.

“We wanted to come here and win. Disappointed with the performance not getting the three points.

“I haven’t played since December, I was blowing. The little break didn’t help us. We haven’t lost in the last five games and hopefully we can keep it up.”

Phillips was asked about his new role under Jesse Marsch, anchoring the midfield alongside first Mateusz Klich and then Robin Koch, rather than on his own like he used to do. Kalvin has learned not to say, “I don’t know why he did it”:

“It’s different. I like both ways. Me and Klichy and Robin working together. The new formation’s good and hopefully we can keep it up. Every game is tough for us. You know what you get when you’re playing against Leeds.”

Phillips’ first ninety minutes since Palace’s visit to Elland Road was one of the main positives Marsch could pick out in his post-match presser, alongside those consecutive clean sheets:

“I think having Kalvin back can help us. Having his first game back and playing in the new system from the start, he’ll understand his role and movements and ideas more and more. I think he can be a big part in our solutions in the build up phase that can lead us and get our attacking players into more dangerous spots.

“What I will be focusing on is the positives. We certainly have more work to do and there’s some moments when we’re man marking phases and trying to break out of that more and more. We’re asking the team to be more compact and that’s one of the reason’s we’re not giving up so many chances and so many goals.

“It’s because we’re not spread out all over the pitch and allowing the opponent to win balls and attack us straight down the middle. We’re more compact so that when we play we can create options, but when we lose it we can create some pressure.”

Marsch was asked whether the quality on the ball was disappointing, and for the third match in a row he said yes:

“Yeah. There were two factors for me. In the build-up phase, our spacing and our movement, timing and connections weren’t good. Then a lot of times when we won the ball we gave it back in the first half.

“We settled down more in the second half and I thought we were able to piece the game together a little bit better, but even that being said, if you lose the ball against a team that’s good in transition it means it can be very dangerous. It wasn’t an easy task.

“Again, at this place against a team that can be very explosive, to hold a clean sheet, is very important for us right now.”

And what about those long balls to Dan James?

“We talked about going long to set the tone of the game but then we wanted to play out. To be fair, Illan [Meslier] was brave in a lot of moments and got our centre-backs into the game. We tried to create some movements to unbalance the opponent but in the end it wasn’t sharp enough or clean enough in some of our build-up phases to get us in to overload situations in the attacking third.

“That led to us not creating and being dangerous enough. We’re trying to build that in more and more and the clarity of how the little connections work, at times, it can look good but not enough in terms of the spacing, the choices of the pass, the timing of when to play and when to move, but we’ll keep working on that.”

One journalist wanted to double check: so, what was the plan again?

“We thought that we could win more balls in the middle of the field. I thought, from playing against Patrick [Vieira]’s teams before, that he tries a bit of a connection to try and find the eight on the other side of the pitch and when they were going to play into some of these spaces, we were going to close them down and win balls and find a way to be better on transition.

“Then we thought that we were going to be able to overplay them a bit better and find some of our players in the space in front of their backline and then lead us into more options and chances in the last third. We expected them to play a little bit differently with different personnel. We made some adjustments right before the game.

“In some moments we executed well against the ball, and in other moments we should have done better with the ball. If you just look at how many really big chances they had it wasn’t a ton. We were still pretty stable.

“Set-pieces were very clear now and stable and that’s the best thing you can say now in a relegation fight, is how do we limit the opponent and make it difficult for them to get goals. In four months we hadn’t had a clean sheet, now we’ve had two in a row. If we can continue to do that, against good opponents, then we believe in our ability up the field to still find goals.”

If you’re worrying about what might happen if we play like that against Manchester City at the weekend, don’t. Jesse isn’t. We’re going to “go for it” against “the biggest Goliath in the world”, he says. Marsch has the benefit of having already faced City with Fizzy Leipzig earlier this season, losing 6-3 at the Etihad. Leipzig beat City 2-1 in the return fixture, though. It was two days after Marsch had left, but still!

Otherwise, Marsch said Raphinha is fine after he left the pitch holding his hamstring, and Jesse’s, er, constructive conversation with Klich was about “some of his ideas and movement with and without the ball, just trying to position himself a little bit better and create options.” By that point Jesse had already started preparing Robin Koch to come on at half-time, because:

“I just felt like we needed more of a defensive presence in there and an ability to help press. That for me was clear that it was going to be Robin, but while I’ve been here Klichy has played really well. We’re still going to need him down the stretch.”

Maybe it would have been easier for Marsch to find the right balance in midfield if Conor Gallagher hadn’t been so scared of moving up north and fighting for a place in the Leeds team this summer. He took the easy option of staying in London and playing for England instead, but Palace’s second biggest whinger after Wilfried Zaha kept on whinging to their official website:

“I’m gutted really. I felt like we deserved the three points. It was a bit of a crazy game — a bit like a basketball game to be honest.

“That can happen against Leeds, they are that type of team. We had chances to win the game. I had a few chances, and I was disappointed I didn’t score.

“In the end we are disappointed, but the gaffer has said that he’s happy with the performance. It was a good performance, but we want to be winning games like that.”

If Leeds United can’t be happy, at least the opposition can be sad.