Leeds United are on the path to purgatory – and the fault lies at the top - The Athletic 19/2/23

By Phil Hay

Marcelo Bielsa’s first port of call the morning after defeat at Goodison Park last season was church in Wetherby and an hour or so in the presence of the almighty, finding time for solitude, reflection and, knowing him, a bout of self-flagellation.

If God is a Leeds United fan, then he had a funny way of showing it to Bielsa and it is doubtful that divine assistance is any more likely to intervene at Elland Road now. Leeds were in trouble this time 12 months ago, listing, sinking, failing, and it is extraordinary that they have conspired to sail even closer to the rocks a year on.

Everton away had people worried in 2022. In 2023, Everton away and a 1-0 defeat pushed Leeds further down the path to purgatory.

This may have been a road sign to relegation but there were two things to pray for when the final whistle came. First, that no one of a Leeds persuasion would have to see the game again or sit through another fixture of so little quality that parts of it resembled a hoax. The second was that help or enlightenment was coming from somewhere because at the end of a brutal weekend, no other club in the Premier League are more frantically searching for the straight and narrow.

Michael Skubala has the reins but really, what part of the blame in this is his? In the story of how Leeds played with fire, the name of their caretaker barely deserves to make the cut.

It is not Skubala’s fault that the club are 19th in the table and bearing all the hallmarks of a team in terminal decline but Leeds’ Under-21s manager on the touchline for a game as weighty as Saturday’s — a game Leeds hardly made a squeak in — was symptomatic of shortcomings of governance at Elland Road.

The away crowd used their voice to dig out the board and their director of football, Victor Orta, and there is nowhere else to point fingers. Jesse Marsch has been sacked, later than he should have been. Leeds’ grand plans to replace him consisted of dead ends, an online takedown of Alfred Schreuder and, 11 days later, the appointment of Skubala and a caretaker staff for the foreseeable future, an admission that grand plans had lost their way and driven over a cliff.

Ideally, the club would like Skubala to push them through to the end of the season; to limit the damage, keep the squad up and let the board — however it looks at that stage — attack the managerial market at a riper time of year. The odds of landing a preferred candidate would be better in the summer, minus the double-pronged problem of Leeds’ own lack of control and the reluctance of other clubs, like Rayo Vallecano, to wreck their own seasons by relinquishing the coach inspiring them.

But Skubala’s tenure can only have legs if this weekend’s game against Southampton breathes fresh air through Elland Road, assuming the board do not blink before then. Anything else and Leeds, without a permanent manager, would look like they were raising the white flag. Football can never quite decide if “wanting it more” is a thing but Everton looked like they did at Goodison Park — a team getting their teeth into a game they knew they had to win.

They earned that result with a second-half goal from Seamus Coleman which, like too much involving Leeds, had everyone scratching their heads. The ball over the top to him seemed almost too heavy for Coleman to catch. The angle he reached it at seemed infinitely too tight for him to score. Illan Meslier was six yards off his line, though, and the whip on Coleman’s shot curved it into the far side of the net, a millisecond of silence exposing the stadium’s surprise.

It was going some to say that Everton had been promising that all game, but in the 63 minutes before it and the time that followed there was nothing to suggest a goal was coming anywhere other than at Meslier’s end of the field. Results like this cut deep. Performances like it cut deeper still.

Leeds, as time goes on, accentuate the difference between a well-intentioned plan and a plan that actually works. It is more and more obvious that in moving on from Bielsa, it was not clear how that bridge would be successfully crossed. The club and Orta piled chips on Marsch but he goes down as a flawed appointment and Leeds might regret sticking it out for so long.

They knew who they wanted to follow on from Marsch but it was not in their gift to simply prise a manager like Andoni Iraola out of his current job. Good players have arrived but without forming a good team, or not one that inspires confidence in its ability to smash through the wall in front of them. Saturday was a day for big performances. Individually, Leeds produced none.

“We’ve just got to keep pushing forward,” Skubala said. “I’ve full confidence we can get out of it.” What else could he say? Skubala struggled to get a tune out of Leeds at Goodison Park — far less of a tune than he did against Manchester United last week — but traits seen in the defeat to Everton were hampering results long before he stepped in, not least the fact that Leeds look poorly coached to finish from the better areas they get into.

Everton did not have a masterclass up their sleeve but Sean Dyche is savvy enough to realise that masterclasses are never needed in fixtures so pressurised. Win battles, dig in, take a chance when it comes; the mantra of survival fights in England since the dawn of time.

Bielsa left Goodison Park on much the same weekend last season with 23 points from 23 games, concern mounting as results meandered. Leeds left on Saturday with 19 from 23 and fishing for evidence of progress finds nothing convincing in the way of tangibles. Leeds struck gold with Bielsa. Since then, they have run on fumes and succumbed to the impact of their own decisions, too many of them over-promising or under-delivering, benefiting from neither foresight nor hindsight.

Skubala’s task is thankless and only the players under him can bring the club back to the surface for the second time in two campaigns. But more than at any point in the past six years, the buck at Elland Road stops at the top.