Theory of Jesse Marsch's muted Leeds United celebration revealed as players hold key to true emotion - YEP 3/11/22

We're all about to learn something about Leeds United.

By Graham Smyth

It's difficult to make your mind up about this team, not least thanks to the Jekyll and Hyde nature of their season to date.

Sometimes they're a snarling menace of a side, Whirling Dervishes whose every move makes life difficult for an opponent. Other times they're just another Premier League struggler, nothing special to look at and rendered timid by direct play that takes their front press out of the reckoning. They bared their teeth brilliantly against Chelsea and were toothless at Brighton. They deserved more than draws against Everton and Aston Villa and got the chastening they deserved at Brentford. Against Arsenal they were a problem but both Leicester City and Fulham had no real problem dispatching them.

And then came Anfield. For all its shock value, the win against Liverpool wasn't so difficult to comprehend because by now most understand why Leeds can cause such headaches for teams who come to play. No one at any stage of the eight-game winless streak questioned the heart or character of Jesse Marsch's team and those things were there, in spades, on Merseyside. Illan Meslier showed up in a big way, so too did Tyler Adams, among others and Leeds, now and again, rode their luck as you must do to take three points against Champions League sides. The team's willingness to run was evident long before broadcasters revealed the 11km more covered by Leeds than Liverpool on Saturday night. A dressing room that could have started to fracture under the pressure of too few points from too many games was, plainly, still united behind their head coach and his idea of football.

There was no expectation of three points at Anfield, not after the run Leeds put together along the way, so it did possess a significant surprise factor, but it was easy enough to make sense of it, especially considering Liverpool's struggles. Yet even on the back of such a magnificent performance and result, it's every bit as difficult as ever to predict what Leeds United might do against a struggling Bournemouth, at Elland Road.

It has not been straightforward at any stage since the season began, with Leeds stepping off what should have been springboards, only to find their levels dropping instead of soaring. Leeds United as a club is never really going to do the expected thing or become a predictable entity, that generally hasn't been its way for over 100 years, but it would be nice to know, with some degree of surety, that one very competent performance could follow another. It would be even nicer to know that Leeds can do it well enough to pick up victory against the calibre of club with whom they are competing for Premier League survival.

The theory that Leeds will give the big boys bloody noses but struggle against anyone sitting deep, going direct and setting out to frustrate rather than bamboozle the Whites, at present, holds weight. But it's there to be shot at and shot down and on Saturday Leeds will be presented with an opportunity to disprove it, while possibly teaching us all something we don't know about them. If you were Gary O'Neil, casting your eye over the blueprints laid out by Everton, Villa and Fulham, it would be tempting to follow them to the letter, wouldn't it? If you were Marsch, the desperation to rip up the opposition's best laid plan by masterminding the first goal, a performance like that seen at Anfield and a first Elland Road league win since August, would be gnawing at your very soul.

His rivals have set traps into which Leeds have fallen but this time has to be different. It has to be, because planning to stay up by the virtue of performances against the 'big six' is no plan at all. It has to be because that win at Anfield deserves to be looked back upon as so much more than a false dawn.

Perhaps all of that is why Marsch had the appearance of a man holding back from the kind of celebrations such a performance and result merited, on Saturday night. Managers are forever moving quickly onto the next thing, because that's the job, and while wins at Anfield don't come around very often, Marsch knows that some of the good work done last weekend could be undone by what occurs this weekend.

The job, for his players, is to give the manager license to celebrate with a little more freedom at Elland Road on Saturday evening. So much has been said, so many words penned, about this Leeds team and their head coach but their story is far from written. What they do next will say a lot about who they really are.