Sheffield Wednesday 0-2 Leeds United: Long story — Square Ball 11/3/24
GERRIT LAUNCHED
Written by: Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman
That first half though. Oof, forget about it. Wipe it from
the memory, move on, from most of it, anyway. Illan Meslier: great save. After
Huddersfield scored from a set-piece the other week, here came more trouble
from a corner, a scramble in the goal mouth, une bousculade dans la bouche du
but. And here was Spider Boy, processing the world at a different speed,
spreading his limbs like Polyfilla, diverting a point blank shot wide of the
goal. Remember that bit.
Let’s also take with us another moment from another
Sheffield Wednesday corner, when Junior Firpo butted heads with Joe Rodon, and
the game was stopped for – stopwatches out! – three minutes and fifty seconds.
Despite the fad for finickity timekeeping the referees’ digital boards have not
yet been upgraded to include decimal separators, so at the end of the first
half the fourth official held up a sign suggesting a minimum extension of four
minutes to account for Rodon’s bloody brow and everything else that had held
the game up. The other column could include stuff like the fifty seconds it
took Wednesday goalie James Beadle to take a goal kick during that time added
on: if you wanted to be petty about it, that four looked low. But
taurine-addled Wednesday boss Danny Röhl, also processing the world at a
different, Red Bull flavoured speed, saw a big red digital four and wanted no
more, no less, than for the first half to last 49 minutes exactly. The greatest
joy of the first half, then, was Pat Bamford scoring the opening goal, with the
clock showing 49m11s.
“It was a key point,” Röhl said afterwards. “Of course he
showed four minutes and then it was four minutes (and) more – and everyone can
think about if this is a key moment.” I mean, we could. Probably not going to
though, if I’m honest, because it would be a ridiculous waste of, ironically,
time. “I’m really not happy about this moment,” Röhl went on, making it
funnier.
All this is very petty, and extremely pedantic, and maybe in
a larger sense it’s another symptom of the VAR age. The grand failure of VAR
has come from the wrong answer to the question, just because we can, should we?
We can draw offside lines down to a millimetre, but should we? We can replay
fouls through frozen frame slo-mos for hours, but should we? We can add up
every second the ball is out of play and extend games, then add on the delays
during the extension and extend them some more, then add on the delays during
the extensions of the extensions and extend them some more, until games last so
long Watford are firing and hiring managers during added time, but should we?
Or should we just go with the flow when the referee says they’ll add a minimum
of four minutes to roughly approximate the time lost, and then does just that?
Leeds got suckered from the other end of this last weekend,
when Huddersfield’s experimental diversions into competitive shoelace tying
kept the first half going long enough for them to score a goal and shortened
the second half so that Leeds couldn’t score more than one. Leeds looked ready
for a rest that day, weary and fractious, sighing and bickering, and they’ve
played twice more in the week since. They’ve got through them, but it’s hard to
say that Leeds United have been good in these three games, unless you’re Daniel
Farke. The 1-0 win over Stoke was, to him, “The best win in 2024.” After the
win over Wednesday, he talked about Bamford’s goal like this: “I’ll tell you
what, everyone speaks about a goal that he scored at Peterborough in the cup, a
worldy. This is for me also like a world-class striker goal.”
The worse Leeds have played the better Farke has liked it,
because the performances have had an obvious cause – fatigue – but still met
the necessary target – results. After drawing in Huddersfield, Farke said he’d
be happy to win every remaining home game, and draw all the aways: “If we do
like this, we would finish the season with 96 points and this is happy days.” A
win at Hillsborough puts Leeds two points ahead of that target, and two points
closer to Leicester City, and a place ahead of Ipswich Town. This is happy
days, however it’s achieved.
It was achieved in Sheffield by veering away from
prettiness, “football fireworks” in Farke’s phrase, towards the effectiveness
Leeds have at times been lacking this season. Make what you will of expected
goals, but stats from Hillsborough expected two goals of Leeds, and two goals
is what they scored, just the thing for sending Farke to his sofa with his
cake, his coffee, and a great flump of satisfaction. World class, he said,
words to make Crysencio Summerville wince, because he might look at these two strikes
and shudder at the memory of his month in Sam Allardyce country, a year ago.
The stoppage time goal came from Ethan Ampadu chipping long onto defender Bambo
Diaby’s head, Summerville, Georginio Rutter and Glen Kamara scrambling to win
the second ball, and Wilf Gnonto giving Firpo space to cross for the original
Bambo, losing his markers and finishing at the far post. Goal two, just before
the hour, came from a free-kick that Meslier banged downfield, where Bamford
held off a defender and prodded the ball to Rutter, who diverted it first time
behind Wednesday’s wobbly backline for Gnonto to run through and shoot, simple
as that.
I hate to imagine a world in which Big Sam had stayed, or
even stayed on the end of the phone to pick up consultancy fees whenever Karl
Robinson got in trouble. But I can’t mind it when, in the toughest part of the
season, Farke’s Leeds start reaping the benefits of just getting it fucking
launched. It’s not completely new, as once Ampadu moved to defence and Bamford
returned up front, long balls from one to the other became a feature. At
Hillsborough, though, they moved from nicety to necessity. From around the 20th
minute, when United’s passing, moving and Ilia Grueving was fraying, Ampadu
took charge of connecting ball to mixer, if that’s not underselling the
placement of his chips into the paths first of Bamford – who couldn’t control
and get a shot away – then of Rutter, who forced a save then a clearance with
two shots, then Rutter again, who got into the penalty area but was offside.
Those passes had a neatness that the stoppage time lob onto Diaby’s head did
not, but we know which one worked.
Ampadu’s overall influence shouldn’t be undersold, nor that
of Rodon and Meslier. As Big Sam or Sean Dyche will tell you, this way of
playing only prospers if the team is solid at the back. Ampadu and Rodon’s
partnership, plus Meslier either coming into form or revealing he’s been in
form all along but hasn’t had to show it, has given Leeds a different emphasis
as the games have piled up this year. Their steady stomp-stomp-stomp up the
league to 2nd has been built on clean sheets, while Leicester were losing three
games by conceding seven goals, and Ipswich Town’s cavalier attitude to goals
against finally caught up with them in Cardiff. At Hull on Saturday, Leicester
needed 37-year-old Jamie Vardy to equalise twice, under the sort of pressure
that Leeds United’s young forwards, thanks to their also-young defence, are not
under. Summerville might look critically at the ball being humped high over
him, but from looking at him, he’s been risking getting lost in self-criticism,
without a goal or assist in five games. Those long balls are Ampadu’s way of
lifting the load up off him, a ‘thanks mate’ for the fifteen goals and eight
assists from the rest of the time.
Back to that sofa, the coffee and the cake. Daniel Farke has
made this season all about his seen it all and ridden the horse approach to the
Championship, balancing his experience like a seesaw plank on a pivot of
temperamental kids. Back in autumn he was already warning that the “football
fireworks” are the easy part, even as fans fretted over his team’s ability to
play through packed Champo defences. The bangers have gone off damp over the
last week, but Farke isn’t being weird when he says that impresses him more
than a thirty-yard super-volley into the top corner. Leeds have proven
themselves as Champo masters of flair. If they’ve extended their prowess to
getting it in the mixer, what’s left to be asked of them, in the next two
months, that they can’t answer?