Peterborough United 0-3 Leeds United: In history — Square Ball 8/1/24
PINK 'UN
Written by: Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman
Three things that have, for a long time, been going ahead
and giving us nothing – the FA Cup, pink shirts and Patrick Bamford – combined
in Peterborough and gave us something unforgettable.
Leeds United’s rhubarb and custard kit now has its reason,
its moment, its place in history. And Pat Bamford has his memento. The best
goal he’s ever scored? Probably, and a better goal than many other players have
ever scored, too, something to show the grandkids one day when they’re bored of
playing with his Championship winner’s medal and his England cap. ‘That was
just the fashion at the time,’ he’ll tell the young ‘uns, when they ask about
the clothes. But he’ll start a family argument that could ruin Christmas if he
clips their lugs for asking about his dyed white hair. ‘That was just the, er,
fashion at the time,’ he might say instead, trying to keep the peace, and
hoping they don’t ask why none of the other players wanted to be as fashionable
as he was.
After the game Bamford was playing the goal down, following
the theme of his boss, Daniel Farke, who said with a smile that the goal was
“alright” and went on to praise Patrick’s work rate, his movement off the ball.
Bamford himself said the goal doesn’t count for more than a tap-in, resisting
the urge to call up Joe Wilkinson and ask to record a special edition of their
podcast straight away. Sod the resistance and sod the self-effacement, I say.
Luke Ayling’s own moment of van Bastenness, against Huddersfield in 2020, was
improved when he confessed to watching it on his phone every night before bed.
We watch interviews with Tony Yeboah, reminiscing about smashing a volley off
the crossbar against Liverpool, looking for the twinkle in his eye when he describes
it. If Souleymane Doukara is out there this weekend, hearing all the kerfuffle
and deciding to hit play on forest_thunderbastard_pope_comms.mp4, then it
doesn’t make up for the time he refused to play but it helps.
Can video ever compare to actually being the person who did
it? Not so far, although tape can mingle with memories in ways that make it
important to cling to the original eyeball edition. Pat won’t want to replace
how it felt to him with how it looked to us, even as he quietly requests a copy
of the ‘All the Angles’ footage from LUTV. All the angles, except Pat’s. Maybe
one day technology will share that viewpoint, some combination of virtual
reality video with full-body ASMR triggers allowing us all to download what it
was like to be Bamford in that moment. According to Pat, after the game, the
event to him went like this: oh, that chest control has gone better than I
expected, that defender is going to tackle me, I might as well just hit this,
that was a sweet connection, bloody hell that’s flown in, ah the defender was
on the floor anyway, so I didn’t need to bother.
I wonder if Farke had a subliminal influence on the moment,
too. Bamford kept getting the ball in the penalty area in the first half but
being too fussy with it, getting tackled or blocked before he could arrange his
feet and have a shot. His goal came two minutes after half-time, an interval
when I can imagine Farke grabbing Bamford by the bicep, pulling him close, and
whispering to him, ‘One striker to another, Patrick, the fucking thing, second
half, more or less sometimes just smash it.’ That’s what Pat did, first chance
he got. The correct search terms for Farke’s reaction, as caught by the
cameras, are ‘Jeremiah Johnson Nod of Approval’.
I’ve got this far without describing the goal from our
perspective. You’ve probably seen it. From a free-kick on half-way, Leeds
passed the ball about with goal-up assurance but not enough conviction to make
it creative on a pitch that, the other week, Peterborough manager Darren
Ferguson complained was ruining his own side’s passing game. Ethan Ampadu, a
decisive player, ended the meandering by taking advantage of what Bamford’s
return to the side offers – a target to aim at. Ampadu lumped it forward to avoid
the increasing risk of being too near Leeds’ own goal. Bamford leapt into the
air to control the ball with his chest, then twisted as ball and Bamford fell
together, scurrying his legs to get his right foot planted, swinging his hips,
swishing his left foot, and striking the ball, a new one from Mitre, specially
made for the FA Cup. It sailed across the penalty area, beyond the keeper, into
the top corner, too elegant to be a thunderbastard, too cool to be a netbuster,
Pat had put just enough power on the shot to leave attention for the technique.
After an initial whoop, Pat let his teammates’ faces show all the shock and
delight, while he soaked it up looking like a guest standing off to the side at
his own surprise birthday party. Maybe that’s what it feels like to score a
goal like this: an out of body experience.
It was the second vital intervention by Bamford’s chest.
Amid his cluttered finishing in the first half he got an assist, receiving
Jaidon Anthony’s crossed free-kick and whether through upper body control or a
lucky bounce the ball dropped from Bamford’s breast to Ampadu’s boot for a
close range finish. The game was just over half-an-hour old and Leeds needed
that goal without being desperate for it. Before the game, Darren Ferguson had
claimed that Leeds and Peterborough play a similar way, while Farke warned that
Posh look like a Championship team in waiting and should be treated as such. So
Peterborough began by trying to play out from the back. It’s probably a good
thing that this is happening and working so well for them in League One,
following Ipswich Town’s success; with European Super Leagues looming again
recently, I’m all for better football at all levels of the pyramid, for
watching skilful players in the lower leagues becoming a viable, affordable
option for anyone turned off or priced out by the Premier League. But Posh
couldn’t get out of their own half. They should have been behind after four
minutes, when young goalkeeper Fynn Talley played a very seen-it-on-the-telly
pass from his six yard box straight to Archie Gray in the D, who let him off by
hitting his first time shot back to him. Leeds kept letting them off for
fifteen minutes, and Ampadu’s opener put a stop to what was happening in the
next fifteen, when Peterborough looked ready to make a game of it.
Ampadu added a second, heading in a corner in the 89th
minute, and Bamford’s glory aside, this match was as close to mundane as Leeds
get in the FA Cup. They were nearly boring last season, when while travelling
to Accrington Stanley in the fourth round they stepped around the giantkilling
traps by taking a steady 3-0 lead; at which point Jesse Marsch brought on our
most important and second most fragile goalscorer, Rodrigo, who then got
injured and didn’t start another game for ten weeks, turning his season’s
contribution from ‘vital to keeping us up’ to ‘crucial to sending us down’.
Although Farke risked Dan James and Glen Kamara at the end here, he did so from
a position of strength, after decent performances from their replacements. Wilf
Gnonto was busy enough on the wing, should have been given a penalty, and still
needs to learn to a) tackle and b) shut up; Archie Gray, moved into midfield,
looked at home there but with extras: as if Farke had suggested he should try
making up for the lack of goals from that area this season, he shot whenever he
could, the irony being that even with that gifted chance at the start of the
game, he scored none, while Ampadu, shifted to centre-back for a rest,
according to Farke, scored two. Maybe we need to play Gray at centre-back to
unlock his goalscoring potential.
