Leeds United 1-1 Plymouth Argyle: The good of the game — Square Ball 29/1/24
MAGIC
Written by: Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman
There can’t have been many better venues for assessing the
magical status of the FA Cup than Elland Road this Saturday, treated to a
weekend tie for only the second time in eleven years, and it’s Plymouth. The
visiting fans sang, ‘You’re in the same league as Argyle’, taunting that Leeds
are not famous anymore, but it wasn’t any more about fame or status than
Maidstone United’s miffedness at drawing Ipswich (until they beat them) and now
Sheffield Wednesday or Coventry (until they beat them): it’s just hard to get
excited about playing a team we’re not bothered about, and were due to play
twice already anyway.
The FA Cup should and still could be a thrilling novelty but
there’s not much drearier than drawing a divisional rival, especially when that
division is the Championship. The 46 league games at this level mix standard
EFL slog with the pressure caused by the financial rewards on offer for
promotion, and Leeds bring their own dose of big club sickness to create the
absurd situation that a lot of people would prefer it if their favourite
football team had not been playing football this weekend and were taking next
week off.
It’s a state of affairs that should instruct the impresarios
who imagine a European Super League is the way to drag the attention of future
armchair fans away from TikTok or from playing as digitised versions of their
favourite stars instead of watching them play. They think they can get more
viewers by making football matter more by bolting on more meaning, like
sequins. In fact, making football matter more has been the ruin of fixtures
like this, because it has made fans stressed about things that shouldn’t be
their problem. Promotion or not will be the difference in millions of pounds
pouring or not into the club’s bank account. The extra load of a replay could
send our overdrawn players into the ‘red zone’ and put them out, injured, from
the already anxious enough league games ahead. There’s only so many profit and
sustainability calculations a fan can do, only so much time to spend
triangulating individual minutes played, trying to work out if a game is going
to be worth playing and if a strong team is going to be worth picking, before
sacking it off, picking up a controller, and getting on with the fun stuff
instead: booting a ball around, even if only through a vicarious screen.
Virtual reality is coming, FIFA my friends, so you might need to think of some
ways to make real football less stressy before all your potential customers
lose themselves in the relative relaxation of their own first-person risk-free
football careers.
In the meantime, down at Elland Road, Leeds United’s game
suffered from the 2024 cup squeeze, although almost imperceptibly. There were
six changes, but a strong enough team for irregular fans to see some of the
current stars in the flesh – Ampadu, Rodon, Rutter – plus some old faves, like
Cooper and Gnonto. The last time Leeds played at home in the FA Cup, last
year’s third round replay against Cardiff, was the last time Wilf Gnonto scored
at Elland Road, starting with his spectacular superbike volley. It’s a sign of
how much has changed in the twelve months since that my main memory of Gnonto
in this game is of him lying prone in front of the West Stand, felled by a
tackle, flat on his back with his ankles together and his arms across his
chest, like a boy king lying in state awaiting his grieving public. Instead he
had several thousand of his unruly subjects bellowing at him to get up,
drowning out the sound of young fans with marker pens crossing ‘Willy’ off
their ‘Can I have your shirt…’ signs and scribbling in ‘Jaidon Anthony’
instead.
Gnonto’s lack of spark was the game’s glaring disappointment
because the other letdowns were more subtle, in the sense that Leeds actually
played well. There’s not much to complain about from getting eight of eighteen
shots on target against Plymouth’s two of seven; Anthony hit the post, too,
before giving Leeds the lead, and despite the changes United didn’t look much
different in the first half. The one thing lacking was the one thing that
always seems to be lacking, the ‘brutal’ finishing that Daniel Farke says he
wants, a lead taken early then extended. The team had close to its usual spine
– Meslier, Rodon, Ampadu, Rutter – but the partnerships were changed from the
recent good weeks, so Rodon with Cooper, Ampadu with Gruev, Rutter with Piroe.
The wings were their reserve versions, Byram and Anthony, Shackleton and
Gnonto. And for forty-five minutes it was all near enough to normal service to
think Leeds don’t have to worry too much about squad depth.
It turns, out, unfortunately, that might all just have been
Argyle being terrible, because once they stopped being that, things changed.
Plymouth’s newish manager, Ian Foster, said that was on him. “I take
responsibility for the first half performance,” he said. “Maybe the language I
used around our out-of-possession strategy wasn’t clear. We made it clear at
half-time and were much better.” I’d love to know how he managed to make ‘don’t
give them space’ so confusing before the game, but once he’d enunciated it
loudly and spelled it out in simple terms Leeds were soon doing what they did
against Norwich on Wednesday night: dropping south out of midfield and looking
short of ideas in possession. They really were following the usual script,
then, including still creating more dangerous chances than their opponents did,
with one vital exception: when Jamie Shackleton was caught upfield, with Ethan
Ampadu still in the centre circle instead of dropping to right-back, Plymouth
broke on Joe Rodon, switched sides into Sam Byram’s absence, and Adam Randell
scored an equaliser.
Rodon looked distraught at full-time, throwing his arms in
the air as the whistle blew, but as this echoed his reaction to Argyle’s goal,
I wonder if he was more upset about the defending than the thought of spending
so much time in the south-west of England in the next three weeks. It was hard
not to feel like our promotion rivals Ipswich got the better deal of the
weekend – if they can get over the embarrassment and the dented confidence
after being beaten at home by sixth tier Maidstone, at least they brought some
happiness to Kent and won themselves some time off. At Elland Road, in stoppage
time, a Plymouth attack was halted by Liam Cooper’s last ditch block in the
penalty area, but his heroics felt a bit unnecessary when so many people would
have been more content with a Plymouth win than a draw and a replay.
The worry all feels a bit misplaced. Travelling fans have
good reasons to groan, committed to a 600 mile midweek round trip with all the
costs of time off work, fuel, wearing down tyres and pistons as an MOT
approaches, or placing doubtful faith in kranky cross country trains. That’s as
nothing, though, to the concern being expressed about our professional football
team’s ability to play so far away so often, when that should actually be the
easy part, and should be the thing we welcome most: we love football and we
love Leeds, so Leeds playing more football should equal more fun, right? It’s
the sport’s problem that not enough people seem to feel that way.
It’s good news, though, if the few facing it cheerfully
include Farke and Ampadu. Farke has alluded to Ampadu’s desire to play every
game as a consequence of his raising at the same Chelsea farm that kept Pat
Bamford in limbo until his mid-twenties: in the last four seasons, Ampadu has
had four loans in three countries, notching three relegations. His permanent
move to West Yorkshire has given him a permanent place in our team, and he
doesn’t want to give it up, no matter how far the travel and how often the
games. Born and raised in Exeter, he might even be looking forward to February.
“Believe me,” said Farke, “all the players, they’d rather play football games
instead of training sessions.”
The FA Cup, Farke said, is “always a chance also to write a
chapter of history, even if it’s not the most likely, but it’s always a chance
and also for the players.” And, amid the grumbling and sourness about all the
stuff that isn’t kicking a ball into a net and being happy, there was one
player taking the chance the FA Cup offers to share something magical with the
crowd. Perhaps, however long it goes on for this season, United’s FA Cup will
be a chapter of great goals, as Bamford’s mustard volley was matched here by
Jaidon Anthony, skipping past two players from the wing, keeping the ball stuck
to his boots with sure, close touches, beating one more player and shooting
into the far corner. He missed a great chance to score against Norwich on
Wednesday night, and he’d hit a curling shot off the post already this
afternoon, but when you know you know, and his shirt was coming off almost
before the ball hit the net, revealing a tribute to his mum he must have been
desperate to show since losing her last week. As a winger, spending much of
this season waiting in the wings, Anthony must have wondered when this moment
might come, so instead of waiting he made it happen with verve and skill and
all the things that made him a professional footballer in the first place, the
things that must make his family proud to watch him. It was a reminder to
everyone watching that, even in the FA Cup, or especially in the FA Cup, every
game means something to someone.