Leeds United's Jesse Marsch facing crucial Sunday as supporter resentment bubbles to the surface - Yorkshire Post 22/10/22
Leeds United's Premier League game at home to Fulham on Sunday feels like a huge one for Jesse Marsch.
By Stuart Rayner
Important though that is, it will be less about the result,
more about the mood at Elland Road.
Winless in seven matches – a sequence thanks to the death of
Queen Elizabeth II and the Nations League which stretches back to August –
Leeds need the points to plump a bigger cushion between themselves and the
Premier League relegation zone than the five goals' difference currently
keeping them out of it.
The 2-0 defeat was not the most damaging aspect of
Thursday's game at Leicester City, nor the characteristic failings in front of
goal, nor the individual errors which made both Foxes goals too easy.
What stood out was the reaction to Marsch.
If a fanbase is not sold on a coach, whatever he does right,
it does not take much to go wrong for resentment to bubble back to the surface.
That happened on Thursday.
Two-nil down, the team was booed off at the break. Some odd
Marsch selections, dropping Jack Harrison to the bench and resting captain Liam
Cooper for an important fixture, added to the vexation.
Marsch's faffing with formations to no great effect – 4-2-3-1,
4-4-2, 4-2-2-2 – only added to the feeling, justified or not, that this was a
coach unsure of what he was doing (as well as underlining how formations can be
overplayed).
So when Luis Sinisterra was substituted with 15 minutes to
go, the away end responded first with boos, then "What the f*** is going
on?"
It was the point the Leeds away fans – the diehards who
provide a far more sensible and important barometer of supporter feeling than
the lunacy and extremity of social media or radio phone-ins – turned.
With the game in stoppage time, Marsch's predecessor Marcelo
Bielsa was serenaded, as he was from the same away section in the first match
after his sacking last season. When Mateusz Klich had only Leeds' second shot
on target, they mockingly marked it in song.
More boos followed at full-time and when the players came
over to applaud them, but the anger ramped up when fans noticed Marsch had
scuttled down the tunnel. He apologised, claiming his mind was full of thoughts
about Sunday, but it as an excuse it was lamer than anything his players
produced.
With Aston Villa sacking Steve Gerrard as Marsch spoke to
the media at full-time – the fourth Premier League manager sacked and 42nd
across the leagues to vacate his job this season – the American’s own job
security was looking pretty precarious. It still is.
The last time it turned this ugly was in the final minutes
of the final home game of last season, when more Bielsa chants turned into
angry calls for the board to be sacked until Pascal Struijk's late equaliser
rescued a point against Brighton and Hove Albion.
Leeds followed it with victory at Brentford, relegation was
averted and the storm ridden out into a summer where the board signed plenty of
players tailor-made for Marsch’s football.
If politics has taught us anything this month, it is that
any turn can quickly be followed by a U-turn, and we know how supportive Elland
Road can be when white-shirted backs are against the wall. But if Leeds go
behind, things could turn ugly, and that could influence a board who have been
steadfast in their support for Marsch thus far.
In sacking Bielsa, Leeds' directors showed they are not
always swayed by supporter sentiment, but it also demonstrated how quickly
things can unravel at Elland Road.
It was only last Sunday Leeds were outplaying but losing to
an Arsenal side who are top of the Premier League, with manager Mikel Arteta
talking about his team's toughest test of the season.
Some thought Marsch had won over a sceptical fanbase when
Leeds pulled off their best result and performance under him, only for it to
stand uncomfortably as their last Premier League win. The suggestion was put to
him after Chelsea were swept aside 3-0.
"There's probably still a lot of doubts," he said.
"It's okay, it's normal. There's going to be people that like me and
people that hate me."
As the chants on Thursday demonstrate, following someone not
far short of a footballing deity in Leeds was always going to be difficult, and
doing it with less entertaining football harder still, even if pragmatism was
the order of the day as the Whites hurtled down the table last season. Avoiding
relegation suppressed resentment beneath the surface without killing it.
Fulham, who finished off Gerrard, are not great guests to
invite to what will hopefully not be a wake.
Ninth in the Premier League, Marco Silva's side are
exceeding expectations, helped by Aleksandar Mitrovic finally working out how
to do this Premier League lark with eight goals already this season (compared
to three the last time the Cottagers were at this level).
A supportive – Leeds will obviously hope celebratory –
response to whatever unfolds will be crucial but the problems will only go away
when Marsch turns possession and performances into points.
If even Bielsa could not survive failing to do that, he has
no chance in the long run.
