Leeds United 1-0 Southampton: You’ve seen Firpo - The Square Ball 26/2/23

JUNIOR SPESH

Written by: Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman

Before playing each other at Elland Road Leeds United and Southampton, 19th and 20th in the Premier League, each announced sorely needed new managers. After caretaking a 1-0 win over Chelsea in quiet enough style to ward off the ghosts of Nathan Jones and Jesse Marsch simultaneously, Ruben Selles was promoted into the job full-time and Saints fans arriving in Yorkshire were singing his name out loud. Leeds fans, awaiting their first glimpses of Javi Gracia on the touchline, were being more circumspect. Adoration is hard won in Yorkshire, where the least impressive thing you can make is an impression. While Southampton fans began convinced, Leeds fans were tense.

In the end, Leeds took the shine off Selles and invited the travelling Saints to take a backwards glance at the day’s hero on their way back to the docks. Not Gracia, though. “You’ve seen Firpo,” the South Stand sang, “Now fuck off home.”

In a league dominated by storylines about managers and their employment, it was a welcome surprise when Elland Road turned not to the touchline, but the pitch. After full-time Junior Firpo, misfit left-back and butt of the internet, had the south half of it to himself while his teammates celebrated the game his goal had won nearer the passing roar of the M621. The South Stand is by no means the quieter end, but it’s where Junior was seeking out his friends in the crowd, flashing them a heart sign before pumping his fists three times with the thousands there cheering him. A Leeds player or a Leeds manager gets to do this from time to time. Steve Evans used to do it after a score draw. Jesse Marsch did a triumphant lap once after losing 4-0. Junior Firpo has had to earn the right, and we’ve had to wait a long time for him.

Firpo has been bad when he’s played since joining from Barcelona, but he also hasn’t played enough to turn his reputation around. Games here and games there have been hamstrung by early yellow cards and hamstrung by his hamstrings. This season, after a bright start in the friendlies, was supposed to be Firpo’s to start again. But he was injured immediately and has had to sit the season out, powerless against his own meme.

Until now. There’s no reason to get carried away, but even before his goal made him the hero, Firpo was playing well against Southampton. He played well in the last game, at Everton. He was good in the game before that, and a couple before that one too. It’s becoming a theme.

Whether Firpo is playing well through the changes of coach, the change of defender to his right, the addition of a traditionally positioned winger to help him, or just the mysterious click that puts a footballer into his best form sometimes, isn’t clear and isn’t important. What matters is Firpo playing well, helping the team play well, and grabbing a win that can help everybody at Leeds do better. There’s an FA Cup game in West London in midweek and a Premier League game there next weekend. The fixture list will limit Javi Gracia’s time to work with his new squad. But the better mood after a first league win since November should give Leeds a better impetus for their business.

There’s a lot of work to do. For his first game Gracia moved Wilf Gnonto and Jackie Harrison to the touchlines, put Brenden Aaronson close to Pat Bamford in attack, directed a more cautious press and allowed more patience in possession. Then he let the players grind it out against a terrible Southampton team, whose big new striker Paul Onuachu had a foot or something clearance over Robin Koch but couldn’t get near the ball.

For a while this promising game risked becoming another statistic of this stumbling season — Leeds looking far more capable than their opponents, but falling down when turning could into should into did it. But Gracia’s first big decision was relieving Gnonto from the blind multi-marked alley he’s been running down for the past few games, sending Crysencio Summerville on, and reuniting Harrison with Firpo on the left, and it worked. How? I do not know. But it seems like Summerville got the ball out of the corner where he was surrounded, to Harrison, who was quicker than his marker, and he backheeled to Firpo. Firpo took the ball to a place where he could shoot, and should score, and did both, around the mysterious hopelessness of the defender and goalie ahead. It was like watching one of those movies where you see things from the ghost’s point of view, waving their arms and passing their hands through people who don’t know that they’re there.

Taking the lead was important, and with only thirteen minutes left Southampton had no choice but going for it and Leeds had to keep cool. Neither side were very good at these things. The post goal mania didn’t subside until Bamford got a yellow card for flying late through Ainsley Maitland-Niles and everyone realised they’d better calm down. Realisation was not enough. Summerville pinged the ball at his own goal, Meslier heading that clear; Max Wöber blocked a Saints chance with an important header that Luke Ayling turned into head tennis as he tried to find his keeper. Georginio Rutter, showing the dribbling stuff he’s got a name for, wouldn’t make do with keeping the ball in the corner — he’s got so many skills he seemed to end up trying to score by accident. Summerville, bursting through on goal in stoppage time, should have either put his shot in the net for 2-0 or got the ball square to Harrison for 2-0. It was all fun, having an exciting game breaking out instead of a tense nervous headache, but it wasn’t what anybody wanted.

All’s well that ends well, though. That was the aim of this game, and is the aim for this season, or rather, the only aim we’ve got left. It’s also how Leeds’ CEO Angus Kinnear was looking at the new manager search alighting on Javi Gracia after two weeks. His programme notes waffled against unrealistic expectations about who might have been tempted to take the job — only he was talking about fans’ expectations, not Victor Orta’s attempts to recruit managers in the Netherlands and Spain who were happily going for league titles and European qualification at their own clubs and had no interest in rocking their boats for us. He was also trying to justify the time it took to appoint someone, claiming this normally takes ‘one to two weeks’ so Leeds did fine — but the only person he needed to tell this to was whoever was tweeting about ‘white smoke’ coming within 48 hours of sacking Marsch, and that wasn’t the fans either, it was the chairman. Because I’m feeling charitable, I’ll assume this internal memo was printed in the programme by mistake, and the apology to fans for dicking about with the bottom three again will be published in due course.

Even in football, things have a way of working themselves out in the end, so Leeds might still get away with all this. In a way, that’s the true aim for half of this Premier League, but we were in the top half of it, once, not so long ago. Anyway, after he scored, Junior Firpo’s name was inserted into the forty yards or fifty yards song, and perhaps he’s going to ascend like Matuesz Klich beyond his forgettable start into legend. Javi Gracia might be the right coach, found eventually, but we can’t give him the full Klich clock to win our adoration. He doesn’t seem worried about that, though. After the game, Gracia was asked if he had a target in mind, for how many wins Leeds will need to stay up. “Yes,” he said. “The next game.”