Leeds United 1-1 WBA: Old ways - Square Ball 19/8/23
BACK HOW IT WAS
Written by: Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman
Elland Road’s lowest league attendance since the visit of
QPR at the start of December 2018 was not a crowd of people in a good mood. The
pre-gaming lacked the choons and WKD build up of a good Friday night. A day of
disappointment – Tyler Adams to Bournemouth, there he goes – was followed by an
end-of-the-work-week review with Angus Kinnear, speaking to Leeds United
Supporters’ Trust, insisting without convincing that everything will be fine in
September. Then, as night fell and fans made their way to the football ground,
news broke that Wilf Gnonto had put in a written transfer request. We should
all have been as firm as Daniel Farke was with his staff on Friday: “Listen,”
he told them, “till after the game I don’t want to hear anything about any
transfers.” A wise man. And a focused man, if he was able to resist asking why
there was such an increase to the vitriol against Wilf Gnonto coming from all
four sides of Elland Road.
This was all much more like the way it was and perhaps these
are necessary steps. People have asked what it will take for Leeds fans to get
over Marcelo Bielsa, and I’ve often told them, ‘winning’. There’d have been no
problems with Jesse Marsch if he’d won fifteen games last season. But there
might be another way: losing. Or at least not clinging to the idea that we’re
still that team, with that status. Farke often refers to the ‘hangover’ of
relegation and he’s right that, one way or another, the headache has to lift
and a new day has to start. And that day has to start in the EFL Championship,
the division Leeds now play in.
The struggle to accept that hasn’t helped the mood about the
outgoing transfers and loans. It feels like it should be more complicated, but
it’s simple. Why does Tyler Adams want to join Bournemouth? They play in the
Premier League. Jackie Harrison to Everton? Premier League. Gnonto going there
too? Premier League. Brenden Aaronson, Robin Koch and Max Wöber all went to the
Bundesliga, Diego Llorente and Rasmus Kristensen to Serie A. The common factor
is consistent but painful to acknowledge: footballers don’t want to play in a
second division if they can help it.
Watching this game with West Bromwich Albion, after last
weekend’s dire game in Birmingham, makes the point for them. We wouldn’t watch
this if we didn’t have to. It’s heartening but also miserable that Leeds have
let so many good players go, and the squad has constricted to its barest
elements, but our team still looks about par for the division now we’ve
compared with our renewed Midlands acquaintances. For a while our old pal
Carlos Corberan was our presumed heir to Bielsa, but here he was frantic on the
touchline waving and gesticulating and pleading with a group of experienced
Championship players – Matt Phillips, Jonathan Swift, Jed Wallace, all good for
this level – who didn’t seem to have a clue what he was on about. The niceties
of his approach were lost on a muggy, rainy night in Yorkshire in August in the
EFL.
Another blaring indicator that where we are is what we
become was the referee, Matthew Donohue. Back in March, Sunderland manager Tony
Mowbray was calling him “incompetent”, and after this game Farke was compelled
to make an exception to his rule that, “normally I never comment on decisions
of the referee”. That was hard to maintain after West Brom took the lead from a
scuffed corner, when a scuffed shot was deflected then finished by Brandon
Thomas-Asante, who was offside, and scored with his hand. In the Premier
League, VAR means this is a no-goal, but in the Championship, there is no video
to assist the ref – not one he can use, anyway. The rest of us can see it at
home or on phones straight away. Joe Gelhardt should have had a penalty, too,
while the nine players who went in the book were mostly as bemused as Dan
James, who didn’t understand why there weren’t more yellows or reds for the
varieties of clothes-lining he kept being met with. “It’s sad for him,” Farke
said about Donohue, “even more disappointing and sad for us.” And it’s typical
of the Championship, but almost a relief after the Premier League, to spend an
evening down in Beeston howling at the ref.
Going behind, early in the second half, was the beginning of
Leeds taking charge in a way I’d hoped they would, building on a good first
half, only they were beaten to it by West Brom. At 1-0 down, now Dan James was
in charge of beating Darnell Furlong, who Corberan said was restricted by his
early booking for blocking James, and after twenty minutes the system worked.
The system included hesitant midfielding by Pascal Struijk, eventually clipping
a ball to Georginio Rutter that, after his flick missed Joe Gelhardt, broke to
James on the wing. Just the fear that he might beat Furlong and Wallace was
enough to take them out of the game, and the cross between them dipped just
where a goal-hungry no.9 would want it. In the absence of one of them, Luke
Ayling barged in at the back post to head into the net, then barged across the
front of the Kop, pounding his chest and scowling, his body language making a
point about who is with this and who isn’t. “I’m not going to lie,” he told Sky
after the game, “I can’t wait for the window to close so that we know what
we’ve got.”
That mystery doesn’t end with personnel. Dan James’
relentless performance, particularly in the second half when he almost scored
from a shot that was tipped away from the top corner, when he kept good quality
on his crosses, and when he kept running at and between defenders inside and outside,
was a reminder that we still don’t know what he’s really capable of. Leeds
still don’t have a league win since the start of April, but in the second half
they started looking like a team remembering what to do to do it. Illan Meslier
fingertipped a close range shot from Wallace onto the post, the sort of
thrilling save he used to be making three times a game. Jamie Shackleton, who
was an attacking midfielder in the youth teams before his energy made him a
box-to-box player with right-back tendencies, refound some verve for taking
defenders on and getting into the box. Rutter, playing as a striker and
struggling for most of the night to shake off the idea that he’s anything more
than a boutique Jay-Roy Grot, had his best moment – a shot just wide – at the
end of the first ninety minutes he’s completed since 5th November, back when he
was playing for Hoffenheim. The squad needs more. But there’s more to be got
from the players already in it, if they can start remembering more consistently
what they used to do that got them to where they are.
What’s missing, apart from numbers – Farke only had five
outfield players on the bench – is imagination, to lift this team above the
dull Championship mire, and a finisher to make that imagination worth
something. Farke expected a bumpy August and the team’s approach reflects a
strong desire for September. Patience in possession often became caution, to
the crowd’s frustration, but there is safety in league points and even a draw
is a way for confidence to grow. Seven minutes of stoppage time fizzled out
through refereeing pedantry and United opting to put a decent night’s work in
their pocket rather than risk throwing it all away. Leeds have to play with
what they’ve got, and they don’t have a game changer, a player who can turn one
point into three at the end of a night. Farke is finding more success by not
thinking about five minutes at the end of one game now, but about 43 more games
when he might – should – have more to work with.