West Bromwich Albion 1-0 Leeds United: Boys keep swinging — Square Ball 31/12/23

TENNISH

Written by: Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman

That mood I spoke about, the one swinging away from Daniel Farke at Deepdale, kept its momentum at the Hawthorns, still lurching towards the host’s goal, but vaguely, less convincing each time, its energy giving out. Every schoolkid knows the next move: give the swing another shove. But how much more shoving can Farke do, when he’s already made his change to 3-1-6, much earlier than usual, and he still can’t move the momentum his way?

Farke wouldn’t criticise his forward players after this defeat at West Brom, partly because he was “very, very critical internally with (their) effort” against Preston, when “we were in our offensive movements just a bit lazy.” Not this time, he said. “I think we put real shift in.” And it was hard to fault Leeds in the game’s early stages. Joel Piroe could have scored after five minutes, but his finish lacked the “brutality” Farke wants to see in the box; Sam Byram did finish, but was well offside as he buried a cross. Crysencio Summerville and Georginio Rutter constructed a fast counter, ended by a foul on the edge of the penalty area, and Wilf Gnonto should have had a penalty when Cedric Kipre pulled him off balance as he was about to shoot from Ethan Ampadu’s straight chip into the box.

United looked more switched on than against Preston, but as more attacking moves ended in rough West Brom tackles, the more they pulled their lever over to off. It wasn’t laziness that blunted them, but the discouraging accumulation of bruises inflicted by West Brom’s big, well-organised and effective defence. That organisation and impact told in the other direction, too, as passing wide to Jed Wallace produced two chances and then a goal – Grady Diangana having two goes at beating Karl Darlow – that were all the Baggies needed to win.

The serrated edge of the unfestive mood developing in West Yorkshire has been scoring lines beneath Farke’s tactics, and West Brom’s manager and Marcelo Bielsa’s old assistant, Carlos Corberan, came ready to poke his biro through the notepaper. Before the game, he said, “Without any type of doubt, Leeds is one of the best squads in the Championship.” Then he listed fourteen of the players by name, describing their pedigree. Then he nullified the lot of them and Farke’s ideas too, as if he was pre-drafting angry tweets so Leeds fans didn’t have to.

Farke made two types of changes at the Hawthorns, all fitting the demands fans made after Preston. From the start, Djed Spence was on his right side, Byram was our best left-back and on the left, Ilia Gruev gave both Archie Gray and Glen Kamara a rest, and Wilf Gnonto was invited to trick his way past the Baggies in place of Dan James’ speed. That combination of rotation with pegs in peg-holes fulfilled request number one, but when it still hadn’t worked at the start of the second half, Farke fulfilled request two, by making substitutions earlier than usual, so his plan B – a kinda 3-1-6 all-out attack formation, that he calls a 3-5-2, that when he describes how it should work sounds like 3-1-2-2-2 – could have more time. It didn’t work, and the longer try at it just meant longer to despair over it. Its failure, which has been consistent since that one time at Norwich, is mysterious, because it should bring more from Summerville and Rutter, but instead meant much less. And in isolation as a tactic, it’s not daft, and Brighton used something much like it while beating Tottenham the other night. But it keeps not working. And that is making Farke look daft.

The common problem, though, is a combination of players being too easily discouraged when decisions don’t go their way – either the ref’s or their own – and that none of the players have the resilient imagination that can control the chaos of six-in-attack, or even four before that’s necessary. Farke is being criticised for relying on the individual brilliance of his forwards, but every coach is similarly helpless once his players are on the pitch. He can tell, but he can’t do. And between transfer windows, a coach can only use the players he has. We’ve moved on from the days when Leeds fans used to insist that Pat Bamford should be tried as a creative no.10, but the new suggestions – Rutter, Gray, Summerville, anyone but Piroe – take us to the conclusion that Leeds don’t have an imposing, creative attacker in the squad who can make something more sensible of the skill-blessed individuals mooching about up front, rubbing their sore legs and dribbling like they’re trying to knit fog. That shouldn’t be a judgement on Farke, especially after a rushed summer of slamming doors on players – in or out – and slamming drawers on contracts that were fizzing like unpinned grenades, but in the merciless world of football that stuff gets dismissed as ‘excuses’, inadmissible six months later. The ultimate merciless step, though, of making Farke pay with his job, simply makes those excuses an inheritance for someone else. Hire whoever you want to manage Leeds, they won’t find a miraculous creative force here who Farke somehow missed.

Finding that player and giving them to Farke to use might make more sense, and more use, of his first six months of work. And it’s not a criticism of his abilities. Part of the job of building a team is finding the players – Pep Guardiola would not win much with eleven Kalvin Phillips, so he demands the players he wants to fulfil his designs. Daniel Farke was hired for his plan, that got Norwich promoted twice, and it’s turning out that making his plan work is going to involve some players who, at the moment, belong to other clubs. That doesn’t mean his ideas are bad ideas, it just means they’re going to be more expensive, and until the club can spend its money, they’re deferred.

And it means, in the meantime, pragmatism, which is probably what we’re looking at, because I’m sure that if Farke thought another available player in his squad would be more effective than Joel Piroe in attacking midfield, he would be using them. Maybe there is more to be got from United’s forwards, but maybe the answer isn’t tactics or formations, but a player Leeds don’t have – experienced, clever, consistent, expensive. What Farke has got from this squad so far, though, is good – if a team is 4th in a league of 24, there’s no denying it’s one of the league’s better ones – and despite the juddering of the last week, the gap to 2nd place has actually reduced by a point in that time. Welcome to the Championship, where losing lots of games doesn’t have to hold you back. Leeds were held back in the Champo, for a long time in the last decade, beginning when Simon Grayson, with his team up to 2nd place for Christmas despite a defensive record that was bottom four, couldn’t extract the defenders he needed from the chairman, Ken Bates. Players can only do what players can do, and Pablo Hernandez – whose name haunts every disjointed Leeds attack, or Gordon Strachan if you’re older, or Samu Saiz if you’re a little twisted – didn’t just appear at Elland Road in a puff of smoke one day when someone spilled Chivas Regal on a Habitat lamp. Pablo was taken, and Strachan was taken, and Bobby Collins was taken, from another team in exchange for money. It’s cold – in my idealist reshaping of the sport, teams would name their squad before the season starts and that would be that – but without it, Leeds United might freeze in 4th, not a bad place, but still far from a good one.