Cardiff City 0-2 Leeds United: Distance inbetween — Square Ball 23/9/24

Mood & Vibes

Written by: Rob Conlon

As Ilia Gruev joined his Leeds United teammates celebrating Joel Piroe’s emphatic finish in front of the away end, he beckoned for the travelling support to calm down. The Leeds faithful were finally bouncing to the second goal they had been yearning for since half-time. Gruev wasn’t discouraging the celebrations, but it was a pointed gesture towards some of the angst in Leeds’ corner of the Cardiff City Stadium that had culminated in chants of ‘attack! attack! attack!’ ten minutes earlier.

Gruev’s reaction summed up the mood around Leeds so far this season. United’s solid if unspectacular start to the campaign has failed to charm supporters, many of whom have become entrenched in the online battleground of Farke In or Farke Out that is slowly seeping onto the terraces. One supporter who made the trip tweeted that it was one of the worst away games they’ve been to in a long time — as comfortable a 2-0 win as Leeds are ever likely to secure at Cardiff, in which players were called wankers and backwards passes were booed regardless of whether there was any other option. At full-time, the usually jubilant Junior Firpo walked over to the away end with his teammates, looking glum, then sharply headed for the tunnel.

As usual with debates that begin online and force people into taking one side or the other, there is a huge grey area of nuance in between that requires more than 280 characters to explore. Leeds never looked like losing at Cardiff on Saturday, partly because Cardiff are fantastically terrible, and partly because Leeds dominated from the first minute to the last, creating enough chances to have won far more comfortably than the scoreline suggested.

That Leeds didn’t win more comfortably poses the questions to which supporters are arguing over the answers. The cult of the manager means if blame is to be apportioned, it usually falls on the bloke in the dugout, but Daniel Farke’s frustration on the touchline suggested he was as unhappy with his players’ wastefulness as the rest of us.

Even before Cardiff were reduced to ten men midway through the first half, Leeds could have taken the lead. Five minutes in, United won the ball back around the halfway line and played fifteen quick passes between every outfield player bar Gruev. When the ball reached Wilf Gnonto on the edge of the box, he incisively put Firpo in on goal, who chose to pass rather than shoot, only for Brenden Aaronson to mess up what should have been a tap in, not for the last time that afternoon.

Lacking the number 10 that everyone craves, Farke deployed three of them: Aaronson, Gnonto, and Largie Ramazani all roaming behind Mateo Joseph, switching positions and allowing full-backs Firpo and Jayden Bogle to play in their preferred roles as wingers. Unfortunately, for much of the game Leeds ignored Bogle standing in acres of space on the right. This isn’t a new problem — Archie Gray spent most of last season begging Joe Rodon to pass him the ball and being neglected. Rodon’s reluctance to give the ball to his right-back is a peculiar blind spot in his game — when he eventually passed to Bogle late in the first half, it was a superb ball behind Cardiff’s full-back that Bogle wasted by earning a yellow card for diving.

Rodon might be the most fitting personification of fans’ frustration with Farke’s football. For all Leeds seem more threatening when he dribbles or passes forwards, he is too often the player telling everyone else to settle down so he can cautiously recycle possession between Pascal Struijk and Illan Meslier. While Rodon has the tattoos and bruises of an up and at ‘em centre-half, he has the mannerisms of a lad who grew up worn out by telling his big brother Sam to simmer down.

Leeds did manage to force a breakthrough in the first half. Thirty seconds after Ramazani impersonated Luke Varney — falling over under little pressure as his legs briefly lost connection to his brain — he raced onto Struijk’s clearing header with some help from Joseph’s flick and finished into the bottom corner with a precision Varney could only dream of. He celebrated with a backflip that had Farke worrying about torn ACLs, which thankfully Gnonto aborted trying to recreate.

But even the fun of a backflipping attacker scoring on his full debut was tempered by Ramazani wasting a second easy chance when one on one with Jak Alnwick, and Joseph similarly being foiled by Cardiff’s goalkeeper after a neat touch and turn. Those misses meant Farke angrily stormed down the tunnel at the break, and his mood was hardly lifted by Aaronson starting the second half with another glaring miss, fluffing another tap in by (you guessed it) falling over with the goal at his mercy.

Had United converted even just one of those chances — never mind Struijk’s tame penalty into Alnwick’s legs — the away end might not have felt so restless. Instead, Leeds needed Piroe to come off the bench and show his teammates how it’s done, which again poses more questions for Farke to ponder — if his “young wild horses” lack ruthlessness, can he afford to leave a striker like Piroe with such a killer instinct out of his team? Leeds have been here before with the Pat Bamford vs Eddie Nketiah debate of our last promotion season, and Piroe’s enigmatic tendencies only confuse matters further — he’s scored twice this season, both times after coming on as a number 10, where nobody wants him to play.

While Farke and his players would be justified in feeling frustrated that fans want all these questions answered right now, so early into the season and with a new team still finding its groove, mood and vibes can be just as important in football as facts and stats. If Leeds want their supporters to settle down and not feel so nervous, sticking the ball in the net more often and winning a few more games would go a long way to helping close the distance in between the team and the fanbase. It’s what everyone at Leeds wants, and on that we can find some common ground.