Leicester City 2-0 Leeds United: From huddle to muddle - The Square Ball 21/10/22

IT'S A SABOTAGE

Written by: Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman

If Jesse Marsch wants to keep his job coaching Leeds United, he’s got a funny way of going about it. I used some idle thoughts this week on how I don’t want Marsch to get the sack, but from the minute his teamsheet dropped at the King Power Stadium, he seemed determined to outrun anybody’s else hesitation and show himself the door. That’s where he looked to be heading at full-time, when after a night of heavy sighs and muttering on the touchline, he turned briskly down the tunnel away from the angry away fans. Marsch was turning his back on the supporters, but it wasn’t an escape, because he went running straight into a dreaded narrative: last time he was at Leicester, at the end of his first game, he held the players in a unifying huddle on the pitch. This time he left them to their fate in front of the furious away end while he made for illusory safety in the changing rooms. Jesse Marsch: from huddle to muddle. It’s not a good headline but it writes itself, or rather, Jesse writes it for you. Thanks Jesse.

I don’t want Leeds United to sack Jesse Marsch because it feels like another step down the road towards our beloved belligerent anachronistic club becoming Premier League also-rans. Taking this season as a fresh start, Marsch has had ten games. It’s the default trial period of the bereft. Clubs who sack their managers in October tend to do it every October, never giving their own plans the benefit of time. In that sense, it’s a judgement on a club’s board, and while they will present an October sacking as an early admission that ‘mistakes were made in summer’ (who by?), what we see is how little faith clubs show in their own ideas. The effect is that it makes the experience of supporting a club worse. Part of my reluctance to part with Marsch is wishful thinking, to avoid the same boring petulant agonising of every bog-standard Premier League club, hiring a coach, pressuring them, sacking them, and never having fun, I wish he would simply win some games so we don’t have to go through all that.

The specific judgement the Leeds board have to contend with is that they did not pick Jesse Marsch up on a whim. Victor Orta spent more than a year wooing him during lockdown, forming a strong internet friendship over Zoom. In Angus Kinnear’s words, bringing Marsch aboard in place of Marcelo Bielsa in March was simply ‘accelerating the coaching transition’ that they had been planning for months. Players have been signed to fit the coach — Brenden Aaronson, Tyler Adams, Rasmus Kristensen — and the board were said to be so confident in their choices that if Leeds had gone down last season, Marsch would have been kept to bring Leeds back up again. Everything the board has done with Marsch, including the months before Bielsa was sacked, has indicated they firmly believe he is the right long-term manager for Leeds United Football Club.

But if it turns out even the board don’t have the courage to take their carefully planned new era beyond ten games, how are we supposed to see any Leeds manager again as anything more than a human salute badge?

That’s the bigger picture for keeping a coach beyond autumn, in general. How that has looked at Leeds this season has kept me prepared to keep this going. At their best — Chelsea and Arsenal, bits of other games — Leeds have looked excellent, but they’ve been lacking the most predictable piece because it’s among the hardest to acquire: consistency. Brenden Aaronson and Tyler Adams have looked like quality additions; the defence has been solid when it doesn’t have Diego Llorente in it, with Robin Koch in a fine groove; Luis Sinisterra looks incredibly talented, needing a run of games to properly bring his impact. Pat Bamford’s lack of fitness has hindered Leeds, but as I felt Bielsa would have kept his job if Bamford had kept fit, I’ll apply the same to Marsch. It’s harsh to sack a coach because of resource problems that are out of their control, and that includes acquiring cover or replacements.

Overall, miserable as life has been since the twelve-month high of the Chelsea game, ten matches hasn’t felt like enough to me. It’s a rare coach who can totally transform a team in that time, and unless a club is prepared to be brave and give it longer, they’ll enter the self-defeating circle of diminishing returns in which they spend more time planning for a new coach than they ever give them. Leeds have been looking like what they are: a misfiring work in progress. I think patience is a virtue so I’d like to give that time.

Anyway, that was before the Leicester match. At the Leicester match, Marsch seemed so determined to push every doomed-coach button I’m wondering if he’s the one who wants out, while I, who never wanted him here in the first place, try to rationalise him into longer tenure. There are few better indicators of a coach running out of ideas than unnecessary changes to a defence and a debutant being thrown into the attack from the youth team, yet here we were. With Junior Firpo a forced return for Pascal Struijk’s injury, did we need Diego Llorente as well? After Leeds were good going forward against Arsenal, did we need to take out Jackie Harrison’s workrate and output, to let the season twist on Crysencio Summerville’s potential?

Apparently so. And apparently only Marsch and his staff didn’t expect this to go wrong, given how unprepared they were to change it in a first half when Leicester, predictably, sent pass after pass behind Firpo into the danger! Llorente! zone. Their opening goal came there after a mistake by Marc Roca in midfield put Leeds on the back foot and meant Koch’s only option for denying Harvey Barnes his regular goal against Leeds was scoring it himself. Then Barnes got one anyway as exploitation behind Firpo sent the Leeds defence towards his side, one by one, as we’ve seen in loads of games already, meaning one over at the back unmarked. This went on and on, Leicester mercifully only scoring twice, until Liam Cooper came back at half-time. Worries about playing him three times in a week were put on the back burner where they probably should have been in the first place — getting some points first then resting him against Fulham felt like a better way round to me.

Going forward, Leeds had plenty of possession and lots of advantages — the referee, Peter Bankes, seemed prepared to give United’s pressing the benefit of the doubt. But all the surging dominance of the second half against Arsenal was absent, as Leeds were absent from Leicester’s penalty area. Sinisterra hit the bar with a curving shot, Summerville went close, but their chances and a couple from Aaronson were characterised by running in from the wing, not seeing any good options in the penalty area despite Bamford’s return, and having a speculative dip.

Starting the second half two-nil down, Marsch went straight into desperation mode. Cooper replaced Koch because of the latter’s booking, giving Leeds a Kristensen – Llorente – Cooper – Firpo backline that looked miles away from any of the good defences we’ve had. Rodrigo replaced Marc Roca and Marsch tried to fix the problem of getting players in the box by going 4-2-2-2, a traditional Red Bull formation we’ve rarely seen at Leeds and the players looked barely familiar with. It didn’t work, and neither did the three following substitutions of increasing hopeless obviousness.

Marsch got boos for taking Sinisterra off, but after bringing Harrison on for Bamford and using Sinisterra as a striker, Luis was the only candidate to go off if Joe Gelhardt was to come on. Not for the first time, it felt like Marsch’s substitutions limited his options instead of inspiring Leeds with new ones. The use of Brenden Aaronson is relevant here. He was superb against Arsenal and excellent again in the first half here, not cowed by the bruising Leicester were giving him. The dire gloom of Leeds on Thursday morning, when I walked up Gelderd Road like an idiot in torrential rain, made me wonder if this would be the day Brenden Aaronson finally snapped, realising the mistake of swapping the gentle snow of the gorgeous Alps around Salzburg for a bus ride down the M1 through industrial South Yorkshire in a miserable storm. It’s only his 22nd birthday on Saturday, but he’s proving himself to be a strong character, with even his post-match interview combining raw body language with confident statements of unity that were more inspiring, in leadership terms, than his coach’s haunted pauses in the same media round. But all that his first half threatening of Leicester got him was moved into midfield for the second half, where all his skills were nulled.

That was another of the moves with which Marsch hacked away at his own platform. He’s not been getting many breaks, but this match made it hard to look beyond him for the reasons. Perhaps you can’t legislate for mistakes like Rodrigo’s against Arsenal, and Roca’s here, giving up crucial goals. But Rodrigo nearly did the same again in the second half, losing possession on halfway with his back to goal, and it starts to look less like a problem with individuals, more with the structure those individuals are trying to solve within. In the same situation, Rodrigo hits it long and loses it, or Rodrigo passes it short and loses it. Is that all him, or is there something not happening on the other end of his options, that his coach is causing? The need for goals didn’t look at Leicester like a Pat Bamford problem so much as a strategic problem — Leeds were trying to play straight passes into Bamford, by Marsch’s design, but the ball was going nowhere near him. That’s why they tried shooting from distance instead, eventually getting one on target in the 91st minute. Is that the players not doing what’s asked of them, or is what’s asked of them limiting what they can do?

Jesse Marsch wasn’t acting like it was his problem. The Amazon Prime cameras kept catching him on the touchline, shaking his head forlornly at scuffed opportunities, muttering when an attack didn’t work out, as if he was watching his finely drawn plans being carried out by a band of incompetents. “I’m probably just as frustrated and disappointed, angry as I’ve ever been in terms of football,” Marsch said afterwards, but who is he angry with? The away fans let it be known they were angry with him, and it’s hard to disagree, even from my point of view of not wanting to give up too soon and let Leeds United become one of those clubs that can’t think its way through short term panic i.e. the same as every Premier League club all the time. It will be hard for Leeds to break up with Jesse Marsch — they seduced him for years, put him in place of the most successful Leeds manager of a generation, Tyler Adams is like a son to him, the mooted winter trip to the USA is going to be a public relations bonfire without him, or rather, with the spectral presence of his sacking. But if that’s how it ends up, we’ll look back to this game at Leicester as a moment when Marsch sabotaged his own defences.