Leeds United 2-3 Fulham: Gloomy Sunday - The Square Ball 24/10/22

ARM ROUND THE SHOULDER

Written by: Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman

A sodden morning of murk barely allowing afternoon to happen was not kind to those Leeds fans, not inclined to give up their tickets, who trudged through puddles outside and inside Elland Road for a grim Sunday of duty instead of pleasure. Leeds United are playing, so we have to go. With no domestic television coverage, no glamorous opponent, no razzle and no dazzle, this was the Premier League showing its arse, hardly distinguishable from the Championship we longed for so long to escape. At one point Fulham hit a long ball up to Aleksandar Mitrovic and Liam Cooper headed it back over halfway, and amid the damp muttering crowd the Champo vibes were strong. This could have been any game, anywhere, at any time, the only difference from 2017 that Leeds are bereft and clueless at the bottom end of a different table. The more time passes since Marcelo Bielsa was fired, the more Faustian that pact looks. Maybe that did secure Leeds United’s Premier League status. But did we pay for it with our club’s soul?

In the here and now, Jesse Marsch’s mad week continued, and at time of writing it is somehow lurching into a fortnight of misadventure and what feels like a doomed trip to Anfield. After four changes at Leicester, Marsch made six changes here, and nobody is really sure why. If this was mitigation against three games in a week, it didn’t work, and exposed Marsch as not up to a simple Premier League obstacle. And if that’s a fitness issue, why is that a problem now? Whatever inspired the changes, the solutions ignored all good sense. Whenever Mateusz Klich has played from the bench this season he has looked good, but with Tyler Adams missing, Sam Greenwood started in midfield. I suppose it worked at Brentford when we were desperate. Here, Greenwood did fine until Klich replaced him. In attack, whenever Joe Gelhardt has been seen, he’s looked well suited to the football Marsch wants to play, and he set up a stoppage time goal here by driving through Fulham’s defence, tackling to keep the ball, then sliding a superb pass for Crysencio Summerville to finish on top of the goalkeeper. It was all made by Gelhardt, and it was a textbook Marsch goal, and in a three-game week when Leeds have struggled with everything but in particular with scoring, Gelhardt has been brought on for a grand total of 21 minutes of regulation time.

There’s not much to add beyond what happened at Leicester on Thursday, except to say that despite — or because of — changing half the team this was a continuation of it, and therefore worse. Leeds started brightly, a good couple of minutes in the opening stages earning an appreciative round of applause from the Elland Road crowd. It looked like more of the usual near quarter of an hour when Fulham woke up and broke through, but Marc Roca’s block on the line and Robin Koch’s clearance suggested Leeds were up for the work involved in not letting this fall apart. Five minutes later Brenden Aaronson set up Jackie Harrison by passing as ever across the front of the box; this time it put Harrison through but his shot was blocked, chance lost until the spinning ball was nodded in by Rodrigo and Leeds were ahead. This was the stuff! Leeds United, capitalising with a goal while they were on top. Maybe things were going to go their way at last.

Maybe things would have kept going their way if Leeds hadn’t conceded three dopey times from set-pieces. Luke Ayling let Mitrovic ahead of him at a corner, to head in through Illan Meslier’s hands at the near post, so Fulham were level within five minutes. In the second half, a true judgement on the team’s organisation, as Pascal Struijk, Aaronson and Harrison debated who should press the second ball from a corner and left Bobby Decordova-Reid to head the cross in unmarked. Then a third from a throw-in, when Cooper’s feet were flat as Mitrovic darted to receive, leaving Koch no chance of safely tacking Harrison Reed and a simple way for Willian to score. You might think, of all people, that Ayling and Cooper would know what not to do with Mitrovic.

Marsch, throughout, looked as flummoxed as he did at Leicester, forlorn and beaten in his bomber jacket. Up in the stands was Franky Schiemer, his faithful assistant from Salzburg and from last season, who opted for a distant consultancy role this season, based back in Austria. Presumably hauled back over to help, nothing on his laptop screen altered Marsch from his usual in-game course: change the striker, then change one of the attackers, then change a midfielder, then throw Gelhardt on for the last five minutes and pray. From Marsch, slumped on the edge of his dugout looking hollowed out, to Schiemer, to Cameron Toshack to Mark Jackson to Rene Maric, nobody seems to have any bright ideas for changing this. Nor Angus Kinnear, the bewildered chief executive filmed after the game in a car park debate, shrugging and insisting that “working behind the scenes” will turn this around. Yes, but what work? Work doing what?

The crowd obviously has ideas for change. Leeds fans joined in with Fulham’s ‘Sacked in the morning’ songs to Marsch, then modified it to ‘Sack the board’, then stopped singing altogether, perhaps knowing that songs don’t make much difference in the disconnected Premier League, perhaps just wanting to go home. It’s surprising that Marsch has not been sacked, because that is the usual run of things in the Premier League, so maybe the board really is considering sacking itself as a viable alternative. That rarely happens, although the shape of the board at Leeds means it’s not impossible. Andrea Radrizzani, Kinnear and Victor Orta were bearing the brunt on the front row of the directors’ box, but with them was Peter Lowy, a billionaire representative of the billionaire investors gathered in the background as 49ers Enterprises. There’s been little sign of their billions at Elland Road so far, although Lowy has taken on the role of silent executioner, flying in for Bielsa’s last match then flying out again after Marsch was installed, without saying a public word. Perhaps there will be a time when the ghostly minority apparitions come for their majority shareholding partners.

It’s more likely that Marsch will go, so much that I keep checking the clock, expecting something to be announced at any hour. Some fans’ minds are turning to doom, i.e. Sean Dyche, submitting to the idea that United’s only hope is to defend and grind. Despite the slackness that let Mitrovic and co waltz away with the game on Sunday, I don’t think that’s the answer. That a squad with Pat Bamford, Rodrigo, Aaronson, Harrison, Sinisterra, Gelhardt and Summerville, plus Sonny Perkins, Mateo Joseph and Wilf Gnonto, can not score more than once in three games looks less a judgement on them than on the supposedly attack-obsessed coach who keeps forcing them to play a style of football that’s like trying to pour concrete through a kitchen funnel. There are attacking players at Leeds who, given space and freedom, can come up with creative ways to score. But even as Sinisterra, in particular, edges himself closer and closer to the touchlines, the target remains the ‘D’ of the penalty box and all his width does is increase his distance from it. To save themselves this season Leeds United will need wins, not draws, and they have a squad full of matchwinners who can make up for any deficiencies at the back. But for as long as the forwards are wearing the same confused, uninspired expression as their coach, it’s tough to imagine how they can do any better.

At the moment it feels like that face is what will do for Jesse Marsch. He’s a coach who puts great value in body language, in communication, in setting the tone every day for a positive environment. He looked, as he trudged across the pitch at full-time, scowling and mumbling to himself as he booted a stray ball into touch, about as far away from the inspirational leader he works so hard to be as I imagine he could ever want. He is not looking like himself. The Leeds players stayed well clear of his funk. Only Fulham’s Tim Ream, a USMNT stalwart who predated Marsch at NYRB, went to speak to him, to put an arm round his shoulder. Marsch is supposed to be lifting his players’ spirits, but he’s relying on old friends from back home to lift his.

Then there’s the fans’ spirits. How will he lift ours? “It’s my job to help the team turn results so that the fans turn their opinion,” Marsch said after the game. “I think given everything the fans were very supportive today. I know there’s frustration, but the energy they had at the beginning of the match was of optimism and belief. We’ve got to find a way again to use that and to honour it.” He’s got the right questions. Has he got the answers?