Forgetting the script - The Square Ball 9/5/22

WHAT WOULD GANDHI DO?

Written by: Rob Conlon

During a recent pre-season, Leeds tweeted a clip of the defence and goalkeeper practising how to distribute the ball and start attacks. Over and over again they practised the same routine of short passes, leading to the goalkeeper chipping the ball out to a full-back. They practised it to the left-back, then to the right-back. The same combination of passes between defenders and goalkeeper, mirrored either side, so it became the kind of ‘scripted’ passage of play Scott Parker was once derided for pointing out.

There were pros and cons to this routine. It asked a lot of either full-back, who needed to trust their chest control and ability to find a subsequent pass to a teammate when they were likely to be under pressure from the opposition winger. Sometimes it was going to go wrong, like at Stamford Bridge earlier this season, when Stuart Dallas’ touch was just off, allowing Marcos Alonso to steal the ball and create a goal for Mason Mount. But the reason that goal stood out was because we were so accustomed to the blueprint working we’d stopped noticing how much of a risk it was. When it went right, it helped Leeds launch attacks, creating space for their midfielders to get on the ball. In the case of Patrick Bamford’s third at Villa Park last season, it led to what might be the prettiest goal I’ve ever seen Leeds United score.

This isn’t to say Illan Meslier wouldn’t have gifted Arsenal their opener on Sunday if Marcelo Bielsa was still taking training rather than Jesse Marsch — Kiko Casilla’s similar error at Brentford in the promotion season is proof these things happened under Him too. Meslier has often threatened the same mistake, and it happens to most modern goalkeepers at some point, even those playing for Liverpool and Manchester City. This isn’t to say it wasn’t a painfully basic error either. Tbqhwy, I’d have really liked Meslier to just boot the ball to safety. Or at least do something other than leave it for Eddie Nketiah to poke into the net.

But I’ve been feeling sorry for Meslier for a while now, ever since he collected a cross against Southampton, and had Rodrigo and the Elland Road crowd screaming to throw the ball out quickly, while Diego Llorente and Jesse Marsch were yelling at him to slow down. Illan just looked like he wanted everyone to stop shouting at him. That look of exasperation hasn’t left him since.

Marsch spoke after that draw with Southampton about his plan for Leeds to become more accustomed with going from “100 to 70”, even if us fans “want to see 100 to 150”: “It means that in certain moments, I want the players to slow down a little — not always physically but in their heads, too. Have a little bit more poise and control in how we construct the next play.”

He referenced that idea again in last week’s press conference previewing the Arsenal match. In theory, it’s a sound idea when wanting to make Leeds more defensively stable and compact, but I’m not really sure what the plan is for after Leeds have slowed down. Meslier doesn’t look entirely sure either, stuck between being unable to pass it short to a defender once the opposition have been able to get back into shape, or lumping it long to Snow White’s eighth dwarf, Speedy.

Without those ‘scripted’ patterns, the onus is on players to make decisions themselves, which is a bad idea when Meslier’s alternative to hoofing it for Dan James is asking Diego Llorente to work out how to build up play through the midfield with eleven opposition players bearing down on him. In the nine ninety minutes Kalvin Phillips played as a holding midfielder under Marcelo Bielsa this season in the Premier League, he averaged 69.8 touches and 54.4 passes. He’s only completed three ninety minutes under Marsch, so the sample size is possibly too small, but those numbers have dropped to 56 touches and 42 passes. Without a coherent idea of how to move the ball forward from defence to midfield to attack, chances have become purely that: chance.

Earlier this season I wrote an article for The Square Ball magazine marvelling at how Meslier was making things look so natural. Whether that be pinging a fifty-yard pass to a winger or preventing a seemingly certain goal, he was doing it so effortlessly it looked like he wasn’t thinking, operating in what is termed the ‘flow state’. I’ve heard lots of athletes talking about trying to operate in this mindset in the last few years, but recently I read an interesting article by Stanford University professor Tanya Marie Luhrmann explaining how it is actually a supreme rarity in sport. Being so immersed in a task it feels like you are able to block out the feeling of doubt and pressure and operate automatically happens in such specific circumstances it would be unwise to rely on it as a regular occurrence. But nor is an athlete’s mind filled with their own voice.

‘Simply suppressing negative thoughts often isn’t enough,’ Luhrmann wrote in Harper’s Magazine. ‘Athletes told me that they call to mind their coaches’ words, often in their coaches’ timbre, and focus on them so intently that the words fill the mental space and tell the body what to do. If the coach sounds confident, the athlete feels confident. If the coach knows what to do, the athlete knows what to do.’

If an athlete is feeling nervous — or, say, stressed — and their coach simply tells them not to be nervous, guess what? They get more nervous.

A good coach gives their athlete specific technical instructions they can rely on in pressurised situations. Luhrmann used the example of American figure skater Alissa Czisny, whose talents were often sabotaged by anxiety in competition. She switched coaches to Jason Dungeon and Yuka Sato, who:

‘…gave her technical points to focus on as she skated out to centre ice: “Put your shoulder here and snap your feet together.” With her previous coach, she’d try to find the feeling in her body that told her the jump would be good. But when the feeling wasn’t there, whether because of nerves or injury, she didn’t know how to get it back. The new instructions weren’t about feeling at all. They were specific tasks, and perhaps more importantly, they didn’t come from her own mind, so they weren’t entangled with her doubts. The technical cues would blot out the things that normally obsessed Czisny: that her mum was watching, that all those people could see her through the television cameras, that she could fall.’

Jack Harrison touched upon how this worked under The Guy That Used To Coach Leeds United on the club’s official podcast after scoring his hat-trick at West Ham in January. Harrison spoke about training under Bielsa, and being taught certain movements to receive the ball. “It allows you to beat a man without even receiving the ball, so you can receive the ball in better positions or have more time away from your man or create space for another teammate.” When Jack made a pass, he was given instructions about what kind of spin to put on the ball. Another drill taught him where to cross the ball depending on what part of the pitch he was in. If he was close to one line on the pitch, cross to the near post. A bit further forward, cross to the back post. Close to the byline, cut it back. “The amount of detail is incredible,” he said. “He does the same thing for midfielders, same thing for defenders.” And, you can bet, the same thing for goalkeepers.

I started wondering what Leeds players are thinking when they get the ball now. What voice do Meslier and Harrison hear when they’re on the pitch? I was hoping Marsch’s more personable touch would help the players relax after the physical and mental intensity of the previous coaching regime, helping to remind them why they were so good over the previous three seasons. But the seamless evolution in playing style we were promised by Victor Orta has not materialised, and now the squad looks like they’ve been told to forget all the old instructions, without having any new ones to replace them.

When Harrison was cutting inside and facing a swarm of Arsenal defenders, or when Meslier was watching Luke Ayling’s pass roll towards him with Nketiah sprinting in his direction, were they thinking of technical instructions that would help them do what we have seen them do time and time again for three years, or were they thinking about an inspirational quote from Gandhi telling them to believe? “That’s the most important thing for us,” Harrison said after the game, “just having belief, and everything else comes after that.” It had better be enough, then, now we’re three games away from relegation.