Leeds United 0-1 Burnley: Nothing new — Square Ball 16/9/24

Déjà vu

Written by: Rob Conlon

If only Leeds had scored their early chance with the game still goalless, it could have been so different. If only Leeds hadn’t gifted the opposition a soft goal, we could have got a result. If only the manager had an effective plan B from the bench, rather than a predictable tinkering with formation that made the team worse, everyone might have been waking up on Monday morning feeling much happier.

It was September 2019, and Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds United had just lost 1-0 to a Charlton side destined for relegation to League One.

I can only apologise for mentioning Bielsa so early, but Leeds’ latest defeat led to plenty of recriminations that feel particularly unique to Daniel Farke while we yearn for a bygone era when our visionary manager sat on a bucket by the dugout and we all held hands and romped to promotion. Nostalgia is all the rage these days, but it’s not what it used to be, and there’s a difference between nostalgia and revisionism. Reading back our old friend Moxcowhite’s match report from that defeat at Charlton was a reminder that the promotion season under Bielsa was far more of a slog than we like to remember:

After all that United’s problem altered from finishing chances, as it has been up to now this season, to creating chances. All the changes intended to make things better made things worse, just as Bielsa’s substitutions did against Derby last week. Those changes were hard to fathom; these were things a lot of fans had been asking for. Now we were left looking at Bielsa, and he was looking at us, and Bielsa will win any staring competition he enters, so we were soon shuffling off to leave him to it. He’s the manager, not us. We tried! Unfortunately, so did he.

In his post-match press conference after that defeat at Charlton, Bielsa tried to explain why Leeds “had possession and controlled the game” but couldn’t “impose this superiority”. Eventually, he concluded: “I say nothing new because nothing new happened.” Likewise, after a 1-0 home defeat to Swansea a month earlier, Bielsa said: “We need something to criticise, but I honestly don’t know what to say.” Again, Moxco’s match report from that loss could have been written about supporters leaving Elland Road after losing to Burnley on Saturday:

Those fans shuffling along Lowfields Road could have suggested plenty of things for Bielsa to criticise. Criticisms came easily to mind after this game because, before they became criticisms, last season they existed for a long time as fears. Fears that, ultimately, proved as inevitable as the spectre in the cellar of the abandoned house, as soon as you opened the door, when it came out roaring and shrieking and on its way to Chelsea.

After the exhilarating start last season fans began to worry: that the team’s inefficiency in front of goal would be permanent and costly; that calm possession would leave Leeds vulnerable to sucker punches if the players didn’t capitalise on their advantages; that naive defending would cause defeats unless the goalkeeper and centre-halves got a grip. It was a perfect storm that, as it gathered above Elland Road, cloud by cloud, felt like a climate.

Five years later, the climate at Elland Road feels very similar, even if we look back at 2019/20 and wistfully remember sunshine and goals, goals, goals. In reality, we were just as anxious and frustrated as we are now. That loss at Charlton came in the middle of a two-month period when Leeds failed to win back-to-back league games. By the end of October, Leeds had played fourteen Championship fixtures, won seven, drawn four, and lost three.

But that doesn’t make Daniel Farke’s life any easier today. In hindsight, the bad vibes of a typical Champo home defeat were staring us in the face long before Manor Solomon fell over to let Burnley score the only goal of the game. On the way to Elland Road, I walked through the glum sight on Holbeck Moor of a funfair without any of the fun — the dodgems and waltzers yet to open, sitting there empty and unused, as eerie as a seaside town out of season.

Burnley embraced the omens by making Leeds switch ends ahead of kick off, breaking tradition by making United attack the Kop in the first half. By the time Mateo Joseph was running through one on one with Burnley’s goalkeeper and shooting wide with an attempt so scruffy it would have made Pat Bamford wince, Farke was looking up at the clock and sighing. Fifty-four seconds had been played, and it was as if he’d read the tea leaves and knew he was in for a long afternoon.

The frustration in the stands only reached boiling point towards the end of the game, with Leeds stuck in a carousel of misplaced passes between their makeshift back three of Sam Byram, Ilia Gruev, and Pascal Struijk. But United started the match in a funk they failed to shift all afternoon, one I’m hoping we’ll be able to look back upon as a typical post-international break hangover. From kick off, Ampadu misplaced a simple pass to Struijk, sending him running over to the touchline to get the ball. It was soon at the feet of Illan Meslier, who tried to give it back to Struijk and booted it out of play for a Burnley throw-in. Shortly after Joseph’s miss, Struijk had more than enough time in possession but waited so long he almost let a Burnley attacker intercept what should have been another simple pass. Trying to calm things down, Joe Rodon tried to do a drag-back but only succeeded in clumsily bouncing the ball between his legs, allowing the visitors to cross for a header that thankfully went harmlessly wide. When the game restarted after Luca Koleosho had put Burnley ahead, it was Struijk’s turn to pass the ball straight out for a throw-in.

There were still some bright moments in the first half. Defending one on one against Koleosho in a position that used to send shivers down our spines, Junior Firpo briefly transformed into Bobby Moore elegantly dealing with Jairzinho. Wilf Gnonto should have equalised after being found in the penalty area by a clever pass from Brenden Aaronson, only to shoot straight at James Trafford rather than the bottom corners. Leeds needed more of that invention, but in the second half Aaronson regressed to the weedy kid being bullied by bigger boys when he was required to be brave and bold. When Gnonto converted his second one on one by gracefully sitting Trafford on his arse and rolling the ball into an empty net, an offside flag ruined all the fun.

The game became so disjointed Leeds were never able to generate any momentum. Even the roar of approval that greeted Ampadu smashing through the day’s pantomime villain Hannibal Mejbri quickly descended into hushed worries that Ampadu had Stuart Dallas’d himself in the process. Leeds weren’t helped by Burnley relishing opportunities to kill time or a referee who needs to look up the definition of ‘advantage’, but nor did Farke help matters by disrupting any ebb and flow with some predictably ineffective changes that left his players asking each other what position they were meant to be playing.

There’s a twitchiness surrounding the club at the moment, from the boardroom to the pitch to the stands, even though this was the first league defeat of the season and there will be plenty more to come. If any lesson should be taken from the promotion under Bielsa, it’s that it usually helps not to shit the bed. Like it or not, this is a new team that requires patience — six of the outfielders to appear in the play-off final aren’t here anymore. In their place are a bunch of signings from Europe’s minor leagues, a winger whose knee fell apart last term, and a twenty-year-old striker who’d never started a league game until this season and is still learning his trade. Patience seems far more appealing when Leeds are stringing wins together so fans don’t feel the need to scream into the void. Because when nothing new happens, there’s nothing new to say.