West Bromwich Albion 0-0 Leeds United: Keeping it doubtful — Leedsista.com 19/8/24

Daniel Chapman

Maybe Daniel Farke got what he wanted from this game, but in that case, why did he want these things? Sometimes what is deemed best for the football team and its players and manager is not what is best for the football club and its fans.

The message at the end of last season was that all Leeds United's problems had been caused by the slow post-relegation start, and that the club would learn from that situation and avoid a repeat.

I wonder if that plan has been as ditched as it looks by accident or design. There's something to be said for putting Leeds back into this predicament on purpose if keeping the league table interesting might distract from boredom on the pitch. After all, Leicester fans seemed pretty dulled out by being hundreds of points clear at the top by last Christmas, whereas Leeds fans got all the fun of hunting them down, closing the gap, overtaking them, then slamming the brakes on going to Wembley and not going up. What drama! What emotion! What a time to be alive! Why make things easy on Leeds when there's so much more intrigue in a hard life?

Besides, Leeds have already got one more point on the board than this time last season, so last season's progress is soundly being beaten. Apart from earning one away point, though, this game at the Hawthorns was like a colour-distorted re-run of last season's first away trip at St Andrew's, an old VHS tape jammed into a broken player. Daniel Farke didn't want one part of history to repeat so took Daniel James off before he could give away a losing penalty, but in every other respect this game can be as forgotten as that defeat in Birmingham. Until and unless a repeat performance has us sitting bolt upright in bed, our darkened room lit up by the latest bright pink or yellow kit on an old cathode ray screen, a slow melting battenberg nightmare.

Maybe Farke got what he wanted from this game, but in that case, why did he want these things? Okay, we have to be grown ups about this, big breath in, big breath out, it's a good hard fought away point against a strong team at a difficult game place to go to. And after conceding six goals in two games, it was a clean sheet. There. Feel better? These things are, technically, important.

But like playing pre-season behind closed doors, sometimes what is deemed best for the football team and its players and manager is not what is best for the football club and its fans. Vibes have effects and those effects are important, but throughout his time in charge of Leeds Farke has seemed unable or unwilling to allow the idea that sometimes it's more important to be fun than to be right.

After the past fortnight's denuding of attacking talent, an emphasis on defending was not the emphasis that would bring frustrated fans back aboard. Yes, Pascal Struijk played very well, but so what? He's not taking over from Georginio Rutter, and that was the question of the day. The answer to the day was not a clean sheet, but the absence of adequate replacements. Exciting new striker Mateo Joseph, the player we hoped would and now we need to burst into goalscoring life, was denied any service. And our last remaining and possibly grumpy source of ecstatic football, Wilf Gnonto, was denied any reasons not to push for his own move away.

Joel Piroe played behind Joseph, in Rutter's place, but not in his style - Farke spoke afterwards about how Piroe "interprets" this role like "a loose striker", "not shining like a mobile no.10 who runs around full of creativity and pass after pass, but what he gives from this position is always to be clinical in terms of finishing". But the problem with this was, as always when Piroe plays there, that he needs another player to set him up for that clinical finishing and he's got their shirt; and that, on this occasion, he looked pressured into performing unnatural sub-Rutter work, taking absurd pot-shots instead of linking up more sensibly.

Dan James simply had a bad game, and brought about a bad vibe. Outraged jeering of backwards passes was a feature of last Wednesday's last twenty minutes against Middlesbrough. At The Hawthorns it turned into jaded booing whenever the ball went back to Illan Meslier. It began with some justification when James, found in space by a crossfield pass from Gnonto that opened up the right wing ahead of him, spurned an invitation to surge and instead turned back looking for Joe Rodon. Perhaps the booing was not a helpful sound, but this was not a helpful sight. It's hard to understand why such exciting players keep turning down chances to attack, especially when Boro got goals against Leeds by smashing the ball forward and running through our defence at will - we've seen it work for worse players than our players, but our players never seem up for a gamble. And now the best of those players have gone away. Perhaps it is for the best if James keeps the ball away from Joel Piroe, but it doesn't feel like a route to promotion.

Farke might argue that all this is propaganda, that point by point progress towards promotion is all that counts. All these things are true: West Brom are tough Champo opposition at their own place, a team of experienced players doing five at the back, coached into Carlos Corberan's Warnockian twist on Bielsaball, and a point from them is always a point earned; and that after a destabilising week of sudden sales and six goals conceded Leeds needed to prioritise a step back towards normality and solidity, to remind themselves that they can defend and get back into good habits.

But I also think it's true that this is the stuff that will cost Farke in the end. Much less successful managers than Farke have been given easier rides at Elland Road, and I don't know how anyone can have the conversation with him about becoming less popular in Leeds than Steve Evans, but it needs pointing out. Fans cut Evans a lot of slack he didn't deserve because of the chaos then-owner Massimo Cellino was habitually creating, and because he was working with a turgid, uninspiring squad. The games turned out as we expected given the players we had, so the unlikeable manager was less of a problem if he stayed than having Cellino waking up in another watermelon patch.

But Farke, even after the sales he listed after the game - from Rutter to Liam Cooper - and with his desire, also repeated after the game, to acquire a full-back, a midfielder and two offensive players, started at West Brom with Mateo Joseph, Joel Piroe, Dan James and Wilf Gnonto, brought on Pat Bamford, Brenden Aaronson and Joe Rothwell, and hell yeah I'll say it he had Joffy Gelhardt available. Leeds had enough in attack on Saturday to come up with better than Ethan Ampadu shooting from inside his own half. (By the way, Joffy would have scored that.)

You could argue that raised expectations at Leeds are a post-Bielsa problem, but one year deep this feels more like a Farke problem. Last season, as we know, he put astounding numbers on the table in terms of points, wins and goals for and against. But on top of failing to win promotion with all that, he failed to take the fans with him. Fifteen games out of nineteen were won at the start of 2024, without winning ever feeling like a fun formality. At that time in the Championship Leeds were averaging more than two goals a game, and less than half a goal conceded. In one week they beat Rotherham 3-0 on Saturday, Swansea 4-0 on Tuesday, Plymouth 2-0 on Saturday; then on Friday they beat champions-elect Leicester 3-1. Those numbers imply football you could believe in. But when Farke - and 49ers Enterprises - look around and wonder why they're not being seen more charitably by Leeds fans this summer, they need to wonder why there wasn't much charity or confidence around them last season when the team was winning 27 games.

Games like this one at West Brom don't help. Yes, a useful point. But if nobody believes the owners are going to buy the right players to replace the ones they've sold, or that the manager will use those players the right way, how useful is that point going to be?