Leeds United 0-0 Sunderland: More than this — Square Ball 10/4/24

TAKE US WITH YOU

Written by: Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman

“If we want really something to cheer about at the end of the season,” Daniel Farke said, before this game against Sunderland, “let’s make sure that we play these last three home games like cup finals, make sure that we have the best possible atmosphere ever.” The fans, he said last week before the Coventry game, and on several other occasions, “are the biggest asset of the club,” and “they have to carry us also through difficult periods and difficult situations.” And: “once this club is united, just the name says it already, it’s the biggest strength of this club.”

And yet, the mood of the fans at Elland Road remains one aspect of Leeds United Football Club that Daniel Farke has not mastered. There have been plenty of victory laps and post-match air punching seshes, and fans have been staying behind to celebrate wins in numbers I’ve rarely seen before. And yet, while Farke wants the fans to carry the team through difficult periods, he has never quite seemed able to carry the fans with him, to make Elland Road feel like everyone is in.

It’s a clash between romance and pragmatism, and a contrast between Farke’s words about playing three cup finals and the actions of his team, playing as if they’re trying to take the sting out of the crowd at an aggressive away ground. With fans packed onto Elland Road’s 20th century terraces eagerly awaiting a big performance in a vital end of season match against an old rival (our largest ever crowd, our worst ever cup final), Beeston’s blue skies and cold winds were ready for a white hot atmosphere. And the home crowd responded, but what they were responding to was, with five minutes gone, Joe Rodon turning on the ball in his own half, passing to Illan Meslier, and making ‘calm down’ gestures to his teammates who, after already playing more than eighty backwards or square passes since kick-off, looked sedate enough already. While the players settled in for their evening of patient passing, the crowd became correspondingly irate. Ilia Gruev was berated for not putting Archie Gray away down the right. When a pass did go to Gray, in space on the wing, there were ironic cheers. When half-time was blown, with Sunderland reeling after Pat Bamford got behind the keeper but Leeds pulling the chance of a sucker-punch, there were boos.

After the game at Coventry, Farke said he, “was not happy that we didn’t switch our play a bit more in order to use our space on the right side,” and yet both there and against Sunderland he seems to have been powerless to do anything about it. The pattern of the game didn’t change much and by the 82nd minute, when Farke tried flipping to all-out attack with a triple substitution, Leeds had played more passes in their defensive third of the pitch than in Sunderland’s. The changes had an impact – from then to the end, Leeds played 41 passes in the final third, 29 in the middle and just seven at the back – but there wasn’t time for that to make a goal. Partly that was to do with the referee, Tim Robinson. First he was the thief of penalties, denying two clear handballs. Then he became a thief of time, only adding three minutes for stoppages. It was a peculiarly deflating announcement, making sure Elland Road knew the game was up instead of inspiring a late rush to win, but teams can’t rely on games lasting longer than ninety minutes. Only I suspect from his reaction that Farke was, that he’d assumed Mateo Joseph and Joel Piroe, late as they arrived, would have closer to twenty minutes of playing time than ten.

These are all features of Farke’s tactics that we’re well used to by now – the patient passing, the wait for a moment of individual brilliance, the denials from a dickhead ref, the overdue all-out attack to claim a result. It hasn’t always made for an enjoyable watch, but Leeds fans have learned to like it, getting used to some dull afternoons because they’ve usually been served with a three-point chaser.

It might be nice, though, if Farke learned what we do like. It might even help the promotion cause, as it has helped his predecessors. United’s last promotion from Division Two in front of a crowd was in 1989/90, when manager Howard Wilkinson recognised that an up-for-it Elland Road was an advantage other clubs didn’t have, and that getting the fans involved was as important as getting Gordon Strachan on the ball. Leeds would try to get games won in the first twenty minutes knowing that, even if it didn’t work, they would get the crowd in the right mood for the remaining seventy. I’m only half-joking, then, when I suggest Farke should line up at home to Blackburn Rovers on Saturday in a 2-1-7 with every attacker on the pitch. He can bring Glen Kamara on after half an hour, when we’re 4-0 up.

It’s harking back a long time, I know, but that promotion season also contains a big hint about why Leeds have struggled to perform since the international break ended and the pressure increased. The clue is Gordon Strachan, and actually we only need to go back to January to remember this: back then, before 2024’s winning run had got going, the difference between going up or not felt dependent on the January transfer window, and signing a creative no.10 or not. If not Strachan, the team felt one Pablo Hernandez short of brilliant. Instead, Georginio Rutter blossomed in that role, a few months after Farke had deemed him too unreliable in possession to play as a no.10. It worked, but now it has stopped working, and while we wonder why United’s defenders look so ponderous as they churn the ball around at the back, the answer could be that the team’s inspiration is a 21-year-old insomniac with a sore scar from a hernia op who, when he looks around for help, only finds 22-year-old Crysencio Summerville, Dan James on a motorbike, or Pat Bamford with his boots on backwards. Wilf Gnonto or Mateo Joseph can come on to help: but they’re both twenty. It didn’t matter for a long time, but the team again looks in need of an experienced playmaker who can take the responsibility for starting attacks away from 23-year-old centre-back Ethan Ampadu.

That Leeds could and still might get promoted without that player has felt like part of this season’s pragmatic calculation. The squad was put together in a hurry, with some transfer targets missed and others changing their mind, while some players who were expected to stay didn’t, and some who were expected to leave didn’t. Farke could still see a two points per game average in the squad that should mean promotion – it’s 2.07 right now, and Leeds are 2nd – but the feeling all season has been functional, rather than glorious.

This campaign has not felt like the justice of getting out of League One, or the wilderness desperation of going up with Wilko or Marcelo Bielsa. The fight, this season, has been about next season’s Profit & Sustainability calculations, and getting promoted before the regulations force player sales; and about correcting the errors of the last two campaigns, getting Leeds United back into the Premier League and back on course to a rebuilt stadium and the 21st century as if Jesse Marsch can be reduced to an administrative error, a typo in the footnotes. Last season, around this time, Sam Allardyce was brought in and offered £3m if he could prevent relegation. There’s an argument for making a similar offer now, £3m to promotion expert Neil Warnock, if he can get Leeds up in the last four games.

Just because you can get promoted doesn’t mean you should, though, or something: it’s confusing. After the draw with Sunderland, Farke pointed out how he’d won the title with Norwich: “Draw, draw, draw, draw, win, win.” They were up against Sheffield United, who won three and drew three, and us, which we won’t talk about now. Norwich had only wanted a draw from their final game at Aston Villa, but could have lost in the end, as Sheffield United drew at Stoke.

Last night, the point Leeds United got from drawing 0-0 with Sunderland was enough to go up a place to 2nd, thanks to Leicester’s defeat at Millwall. With the Foxes faltering and Ipswich always unpredictable, three-into-two on the final day feels likely, a thrill for neutrals and perhaps the prelude to the sort of legendary Bank Holiday party we all started imagining when the fixtures were released. People still talk about Bournemouth in 1990, while that teenager in the South Stand who just started legally drinking this season was only four years old when Jermaine Beckford scored against Bristol Rovers, and wants some of what they missed in 2020. But did anyone imagine promotion looking like a 0-0 home draw on the last day, or perhaps a dour 2-0 defeat, still enough thanks to other results for Leeds to go up in 2nd place?

It could happen. And it would do fine. But it’s not the stuff that dreams are made of. A lot of people will tell you that doesn’t matter, that promotion at any cost is the only important thing. But the mood of Elland Road during the Sunderland game suggests Beeston is one place that still wants a little bit more from football.