Leeds and Jesse Marsch are back to square one - The Athletic 17/10/22

By Phil Hay

Even with hindsight, there was no knowing who or what Rodrigo was aiming for.

A hoofed pass from right to left, the dots joined in his head but nowhere else, and Arsenal were in: Bukayo Saka heading down to Martin Odegaard, Odegaard telepathic with a return ball and Saka shooting into the roof of the net.

Nil-nil it was and 1-0 it became, the goal Leeds could not permit if much was to come their way on Sunday. One for Arsenal was liable to turn into two or three and in that sequence, late in the first half, came more evidence of Leeds stringing themselves up.

Luis Sinisterra’s red card against Aston Villa, mistakes from Liam Cooper at Crystal Palace and, for good measure, Rodrigo hooking possession blindly to no one after half an hour of work to keep Arsenal in check; back to square one, which is where Jesse Marsch has been since August.

Marsch has had an arm around Rodrigo, physically and metaphorically, for many months but there was no touchy-feely treatment this time and when the interval came, the forward was gone, replaced by Patrick Bamford.

But still the self-inflicted damage mounted, as William Saliba conceded a penalty and Bamford drove it wide — one of those misses which occurs in slow motion.

Subsequent replays showed Marsch with his hands on his knees, his head and his heart sinking. This defeat to Arsenal was hardly on him.

One-nil did not become 2-0 or 3-0, and Arsenal were lucky to get out of Elland Road with the victory they pilfered, their chin severely tested and cage rattled so often that the swagger worn by league leaders was somewhere else entirely.

Twice now this season, teams have come to Leeds to play, flex their muscles and go toe-to-toe, and twice they have been powerfully ambushed, albeit with differing results.

It is six games without a win now, though, four of them losses, and Marsch’s face, the injustice on it, told you results are starting to weigh on him.

“We’ve got to find ways in the next few matches to get points out of them, because that’s important right now for our season,” he said. There are moments in management where nothing else matters.

Last weekend, as Leeds were beaten 2-1 away by Crystal Palace, most people seemed to see the same thing. Marsch accepted that from the interval onwards at Selhurst Park, Leeds struggled to throw darts at the board, let alone hit it.

Angus Kinnear, writing in yesterday’s programme, described that part of the Palace match as “lacklustre” and “not up to standard”, a chief executive extolling room for improvement — and by extension, the club doing the same. The board need this to work — for their sanity, for the good of their roadmap and for the credibility of the decision to get into bed with Marsch in the first place. They want his reign to catch fire and stay alight.

What they have seen so far is the ambiguity of a tenure which seduces everyone before halting at the side of the road.

Running Chelsea ragged in the third game of the season got the engine going, only for two points from the five fixtures before this one to stall it again.

Chelsea was a 90-minute extravaganza but Leeds, with Marsch as their head coach, have not had many games which didn’t consist of fits and starts, not many as compelling as yesterday’s one.

Isolated scorelines are no more here or there than appointing Marsch in the first place was about Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds conceding four at home to Tottenham Hotspur two days earlier. Leeds have not been properly on a roll for 18 months now and the withdrawal of anticipation has dulled the senses.

But against Arsenal, like it had against Chelsea, the football felt more tantalising, more positively narcotic.

A localised power cut halted the game in the second minute, imposing a break of over half an hour while the Premier League’s computer systems reset and underwent tests, and it should have been assumed then that what followed would not be conventional.

Arsenal’s reaction at full-time, hugs all-round, was an admission that they had got away with being given a veritable chasing. They survived the mayhem of added time when Chris Kavanagh — between power outages and a hell of an afternoon, earning his money and then some — sent off Gabriel and awarded Leeds a second penalty, only for VAR to overturn both decisions by penalising a nudge by Bamford before the Brazilian defender aimed a kick at him.

Briefly, while the game was suspended, there was talk of proceeding without VAR backup but it was as well that in terms of technology, the officials were fully armed.

Marsch was perplexed by the call around Gabriel, saying he had “no idea” why that controversy played out as it had, and he was no less bewildered by the numerous chances that slipped through Leeds’ fingers, some of them denied by Aaron Ramsdale’s reflexes, some of them wasted.

“We need to score goals,” Marsch said. “We have to score goals.” It feels like his route to a better night’s sleep.

Drinking the performance against Arsenal in, it was possible to see again how Marsch’s model could come good, how his football could be something Elland Road feeds on happily.

“That was a showcase of the way we can play at our best,” Marsch said, and his team are not hard to admire at their best. But, as he added as a caveat, yesterday yielded nothing.

Better on the day but the well was dry, and it has escaped no one’s attention that it is joint-bottom Leicester next, followed by Fulham at home — two games in four days where unrewarded endeavour will be of no use to anyone.