Leeds United 3-0 Birmingham City: Time for a good year — Square Ball 2/1/24
RESOLUTIONS
Written by: Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman
A lot of foolish things can get said or done on a New Year’s
Day, when the flip of a calendar makes people vulnerable to seductive changes.
This win over Birmingham City came in an attractive wrapper implying that all
Leeds United’s problems are over already for 2024. A new year, a new Pat
Bamford, a new playmaking Georgi, a new win, a new hope, no new problems. At
this time of year it’s easy to exaggerate the differences, like making one trip
to the gym in January and ticking the box marked resolved.
Bamford’s goal was not a resolution, but if it doesn’t mean
a complete comeback, it at least dragged him out of the void. He got a lot of
attention when he unveiled his dyed white hair at the start of December, and it
was a pleasure to see that joined, at the start of January, by his fine white
teeth. Friends – Patrick smiled. He smiled because he scored a good goal. Not
just his first goal since April, but his first goal in a Leeds United win since
23rd May 2021. That was a penalty to celebrate Elland Road’s first
post-pandemic crowd for the last game of the season, against West Brom. It was
five days before that, at Southampton, when he last scored in a win from open
play; the last time he scored from open play in a Leeds United win at Elland
Road was also against Southampton, on 23rd February, 2021. In front of a crowd
to enjoy it with? The Huddersfield game in March 2020, when the day belonged to
Luke Ayling and the night to Covid-19. It really, really, really has been a
while.
This goal really was Pat’s goal. The team has not been used
to having a target player this season, let alone a bottle blonde one, so when
Archie Gray had the ball at his feet Bamford was quick to dissuade him from his
usual pass into the penalty area, pointing to Dan James out wide on the right.
James knew what to do from there, as Bamford knew he would. Not a little square
pass into the box for Rutter or someone to touch and turn on, but a high cross
to the back post where Bamford rose, stayed risen, and declared himself
resurrected with a header past John Ruddy. In the celebrations he had Rutter
for a hype man and a winsome touch to his smile, as if while happy for the goal
he’d scored, he still wanted to express regret for all the goals he hasn’t; and
that could also have been restraint, remembering the wild celebrations of his
equaliser against Brentford in that other lifetime, when he pulled his
hamstring. All that history, here, came down to something quite simple: a
striker scoring a goal. Later, Bamford hit the post, and later still, he was
subbed off to an ovation. It all felt good.
Georginio Rutter was more than hype in this game, but
whether it marked his relaunch as the creative playmaker Leeds have been
looking for remains to be seen. But it’s tempting to think so, and this was a
seductive audition. Behind Bamford, he roamed, swapping positions with James
and Crysencio Summerville, making room for Gray coming forward, or Firpo, and
making a third goal by chipping a pass into Firpo’s path, from where the ball
was squared for a trademark Summerville pick and roll into the corner. He was
playful, earning him a fond rebuke from Stuart Dallas in the tunnel afterwards
for veering too close to showboating, but I’m not sure if his jogo bonito
didn’t end up answering the wrong question about the stubborn defences at
Preston and West Brom.
We might have better answers if Leeds had been playing a
better team, but Birmingham were awful. Swapping John Eustace for Wayne Rooney
should be a warning to everybody about thinking your coach is underachieving
when he’s actually holding the team together, except football is already
littered with ignored examples of that, every season. We’ll find more out about
playing Bamford and Rutter together if it’s tried away – and it should be – and
tried against a team that can control a ball, pass it to each other, shoot, or
defend, or that doesn’t completely look like a group of players who hate their
celebrity manager for working them into the ground in pursuit of the fitness
needed to play a style of football they don’t have the ability for. I suspect
he’s been sending videos of Ederson to 37-year-old goalie John Ruddy with
instructions like, ‘You do that you, lad’, and that Birmingham’s Monday morning
decision to remove Rooney from the team WhatsApp group will have caused an
outbreak of celebratory emojis.
Rutter, like Summerville, has been a chance factory all
season, but not in the dictatorial, dominating way Leeds have been seeking
against organised teams on the road. We already knew that, given space, Rutter
can seize on opportunities, like when Firpo makes a run behind the defence. The
differences against Birmingham looked more due to Bamford than Rutter. Despite
their designations on the formations, usually neither Rutter nor Joel Piroe
have played as a line-leading no.9, not the way Bamford does it, and their
joint false-nineness has tended to make crowded situations around the box more
crowded. In the nicest sense Bamford soothed that problem by staying out of
Rutter’s way, getting up front into the spaces that meant Birmingham’s
defenders had to do more than block, they had to think. With Bamford dragging
the Blues away from Rutter and closer to Ruddy, there was more space for
United’s attackers to frolic. This was not so much Rutter unlocking Birmingham
the way we longed for someone to unlock West Brom, more Bamford sticking a
crowbar in the door and leaning, making the gaps United could play through.
These things can come down to chicken and egg questions, but
the situation surrounding United’s blocked creativity can be solved this way,
by combinations rather than individuals, for as long as Pabloesque dreams go
slept on. I’m not sure Rutter, aged 21, is yet playing with the picture in his
mind that great playmakers use, those three moves ahead that defenders can’t
predict. But, with a bit of space and a full-back on the move, he can do the
needful next steps better than most. It’s splitting milliseconds to ask what
made the third goal, Firpo’s run or Rutter’s vision – the way Bamford arranged
Gray and James for his goal was easier to read. The goal between, finished by
Dan James, also had Firpo as its source, giving the ball to Summerville so he
could go to the byline and get it back. Maybe it’s Junior with the vision to
unlock defences? Even with spectacular individuals, though, these moments are
the aim, when players are reading each other and writing the next lines
together. Team sport, innit.
It’s also a time sport. Daniel Farke was asked about
Rutter’s role after this game, and answered by talking about it as evolution,
not breakthrough. Farke said he’s been moving Rutter deeper, game by game,
“because we got the feeling he has improved in many, many areas in his game.”
Training has made him fitter, so he can roam further for longer, he’s become
“tidier” with the ball, he’s learned more “positional discipline (for) where we
want him when he plays deeper”, he’s become more confident after the lows of
last season. Farke spoke about a process with Bamford, too, not just recovering
from his injuries but from, “a period when he was also a bit down and a bit
moody due to the situation”. When a plan comes together on the 1st January,
it’s tempting to ask why all this wasn’t done much sooner. Farke was
explaining, here, how it wouldn’t have worked sooner. “We got the feeling today
is the right moment to put him into the mix,” Farke said about Bamford, and
with Rutter readier to play deeper, “it also helped (Rutter) to have a target
player like Patrick up front”.
Time is always against football teams, for lots of reasons.
Fans expect attributes to be represented fully and immediately on the pitch
like in computer games (‘Just choose a different tactic!’). What was done
yesterday – or in 2021 – is soon forgotten, as careers are made or finished
from the ninety minutes happening now. After relegation from the Premier
League, parachute payments pour away like sand through fingers, worrying the
fiscal side of following a football club. And in the Championship, with 46 games
to play, waiting for improvements to come from training has a sharper edge
because there’s so little time for the coaches to train the players. Daniel
Farke’s insistence on patiently ignoring the league table comes from this,
because he has a squad that wasn’t assembled until September, spent much of
autumn away on international duties, and has just played nine times in 33 days.
“The lads deserve, right now, two quieter days,” said Farke, already being
asked about building up to the FA Cup.