JON HOWE: THE GREATNESS AND PERFECTION OF LEEDS - Leedsunited.com 21/1/23

In his latest column for leedsunited.com, lifelong supporter Jon Howe reflects on Wednesday's great win against Cardiff City and the upcoming match with Brentford on Sunday.

Howe is the author of two books on the club, ‘The Only Place For Us: An A-Z History of Elland Road’ - which has been updated as a new version for 2021 - and ‘All White: Leeds United’s 100 Greatest Players’ in 2012.

In all honesty I can’t say it applies to every aspect of my life, but where Leeds United are concerned, I’m a perfectionist. I’m what you might call a very demanding fan. Of course I’m happy with any form of win, and sometimes even a point, and I will be ecstatic with certain wins in certain circumstances, but in the pursuit of perfection I’m sometimes left a little flat when the score-line doesn’t reflect a utopian vision I’ve constructed in my own mind, and one which, in all fairness, I know Leeds United are capable of producing.

Wednesday evening’s Emirates FA Cup third round replay versus Cardiff City presented exactly this scenario. We were ticking along just fine; the football was fluid and sparkling, the goals were flowing and the promise of more never faded. Willy Gnonto, fast becoming everyone’s favourite player, and I’m no different, had scored two goals, you’d need a heart of stone to deny that Patrick Bamford deserved his two goals after all his injury troubles, and Rodrigo had maintained his 2022/23 renaissance with a coolly taken strike. Not only that, every goal was well constructed and clinically finished; everything we had been crying out for all season had been delivered in one neat, 90-minutes.

This was like a crash course in the glorious majesty of supporting Leeds United; Leeds United in bite-sized form and without all the bad bits, like a ‘Best of’ compilation of Leeds United’s greatest moments, without the experimental b-sides, the mis-judged filler tracks and the triple concept album after we all went to a retreat in India that time and got a bit ‘lost’. If you had never been to a Leeds United game before, the 5-2 win over Cardiff City was definitely all the very easily consumable bits delivered on a plate.     

But somehow I managed to walk away feeling a bit flat because, well, I’m a perfectionist. I wanted Joe Gelhardt to score because I think it will make a massive difference to his game, I wanted Jack Harrison to score because he was absolutely brilliant all night and thoroughly deserved it, and I wanted both Gnonto and Bamford to complete their respective hat-tricks because, as well as being a perfectionist, I’m really, really greedy. I didn’t get any of that, and then Cardiff scored twice in the last six minutes to rub some sheen off the victory and somehow we’d managed to end a thoroughly convincing win in a negative way.

As well as being greedy and a perfectionist, I’m a grump, and I fully admit it. In the immediate aftermath I chewed all this over on the walk home, naturally thinking only about the last things I saw, rather than the opulent splendour of what was paraded before that. But when I got home and started catching up on social media, I relived Willy Gnonto’s two goals and saw a clip of the interview with Patrick Bamford on ITV4, and saw how Mateusz Klich had ended his on-pitch goodbye wave in the most ‘Klich way’ possible, and was able to capture a little perspective on the evening.

Forget the goals conceded, forget it was only Cardiff City and Brentford on Sunday will be a very different prospect, forget Wober going off injured; try telling Willy Gnonto that life isn’t absolutely fantastic right now? Try picturing a young Leeds fan’s face when their parents explain to them there is actually a FOURTH round of the FA Cup? Try and wipe the smile off Patrick Bamford’s face?

I’m the guy who grumbled at Leeds conceding ONE goal in the 6-1 demolition of our near-neighbours Bradford City at the end of the 2000/01 season, when Leeds had six different scorers, and the same again when we conceded in the 6-1 win versus Sheffield Wednesday in the 1991/92 title season, and when Leeds were the most imperious and devastating I’ve ever seen us be against a team in the same division, because I wanted perfection. And yet my force field of pessimism was penetrated by the irresistible positivity radiating out of Elland Road on Wednesday evening. And in a very difficult season, and in a very challenging Premier League existence, we’ve come to recognise that we need to cling on tightly to these moments when they come.

How good must Willy Gnonto be feeling right now? As well as the skills, the adulation and the smile, apparently his dad drops him off at Thorp Arch for training every morning. What a life? No buses, as Arctic Monkeys once sang, albeit definitely about a very different scenario. The ease with which Willy appears able to accomplish things not only defies his age, but marks him out as a rare breed in football in general. I’m sure the time will come when he makes the wrong decision, or is pushed off the ball, or fails to make the right pass in a tight situation, but we’ve yet to see it. We’ve spent decades watching players with 10 years more experience under their belts fail to deliver what Willy has in just a few weeks, and you know there’s so much more to come.

It’s the promise of that, the closure we received and definitely needed from Klich leaving and the confidence that several players will have got from the Cardiff win, which made Wednesday evening an occasion to cherish, and made me realise that my pursuit of perfection was idealistic folly; an inconsequential quest for a footballing nirvana and a blissful Shangri-La which simply doesn’t exist. In short, you’ve got to take any positives you can, and enjoy them.

And ultimately, the upshot of Wednesday night is that Leeds built on the positives from the Aston Villa defeat and actually delivered. We’ve seen Leeds toil in so many cup games over the years, against teams we should be wiping the floor with, but here Leeds finally dealt out the spanking a cup fixture promised on paper. Momentum and the difference that a win can make are huge things in football; they bring good habits, they make decisions easier, they make movements quicker, simpler and more impulsive, they make a player ‘expect’ things to happen and not just ‘hope’ that they happen.

Brentford on Sunday afternoon is a very different challenge, but Leeds are halfway to momentum and that makes us a very different challenge too. Leeds needed a win in 2023, and they’ve got one. Confidence is an intangible thing that you can’t touch, but which every footballer wants. The confidence Willy Gnonto, Rodrigo, Patrick Bamford and Jack Harrison are feeling right now is a rare and precious commodity and came on the back of this 5-2 win versus Cardiff. We are back scoring goals, back on the attack and back with a snarl and a swagger. It wasn’t perfect, but life rarely is, and let’s be honest, we probably wouldn’t love Leeds United in the same way without the imperfections.