Leeds United 3-0 Coventry City: Anticipation — Square Ball 30/9/24

The View From The Afternoon

Written by: Rob Conlon

Anticipation has the habit to set you up for disappointment, or so sang Alex Turner. Given he supports Sheffield Wednesday, I’m not sure what he was expecting anyway — Ian Poveda to fire them to the Premier League? Regardless, the point stands. Everyone at Leeds United is anticipating promotion this season, and until the title is secured that only leaves room for disappointment.

With the suits at Elland Road promising supporters we weren’t going to repeat the same mistakes of last year, particularly the standing start to the campaign that left Leeds playing catch up, the current season has been turned into a race resembling a time trial in Mario Kart. As long as the ghost of last season is in the rear view mirror, it can’t haunt us.

After beating Coventry 3-0 at Elland Road, Leeds are now four points ahead of where they were after seven games last season. Not only that, they’re six ahead of Daniel Farke’s Norwich team of 2018/19, and have won a point more than Farke’s 2020/21 Norwich side — two seasons in which they won the title with more than ninety points.

But comparison is the thief of joy, and being so reductive of what this Leeds team are doing right now can suck all the fun out of it. I’m not immune to the same complacency. I’ve written before how, once or twice a season, the temptation of staying in the pub and catching up with the game later can be seductive. The rarity of a Saturday 3pm kick off (acceptable drinking time!) coupled with the last remnants of autumnal sunshine burning off the chilly temperatures left me wondering whether it was worth wasting some of the final beer garden weather of 2024. After all, I was expecting Leeds to beat Coventry, so I was only in danger of a letdown.

Thankfully, within fifteen minutes of the opening whistle Wilf Gnonto made my decision to leave the pub worthwhile. We can laugh at Coventry ‘keeper Ben Wilson’s ‘attempts’ at saving Leeds’ second and third goals, but while he got a hand to Gnonto’s strike for the opener, don’t let that detract from the finish. Powerful and precise, it was everything Leeds have been crying out for. The build up to the goal was equally impressive: from Mateo Joseph winning the ball in Coventry’s half, Leeds zipped eleven passes around the pitch, patient without lacking urgency or ambition, allowing attackers to buzz around off the ball, dragging defenders with them and creating space for Junior Firpo to grab his inevitable assist.

The speed and accuracy with which Leeds passed all afternoon was an antidote to some of the more laborious football this team are sometimes guilty of. Farke described his players afterwards as being “proactive in the head”: “It felt like we had the solution for the next pass always in our head before the ball arrived, instead of the first touch stopping the ball then having a look and deciding.”

Leeds are always more threatening when the players are trusting their instinct, but with a new forward line — and a new midfield once Ao Tanaka replaced the injured Ethan Ampadu — it can take time for these instincts to collectively align. Marcelo Bielsa’s prescriptive training was designed so that once his players became automatons, the intuition of their talent could produce something that surprised even themselves, and that’s when the magic would happen.

Without thinking too deeply about what they were doing against Coventry, Leeds’ current squad showed skills we were not yet aware they possessed. Little Largie Ramazani bullied a centre-half out of the way to bring down a chipped pass into the air, turning and forcing a rare good save from Wilson. Ilia Gruev tested Wilson again with a half-volley from 35 yards that nobody expected him to get on target, and later put Bogle in on goal with a pinpoint crossfield ball that belied his reputation for simple sideways passes. Most strikingly of all, having ignored Bogle all afternoon at Cardiff a week earlier, Joe Rodon realised he had a full-back to his right, giving Bogle the ball quickly and regularly. The relief!

Leeds’ display earned a hearty round of applause from Elland Road at the half-time whistle, the crowd encouraged by a dominant performance rather than nervous that they should have been further ahead. It didn’t take much longer for United to get the buffer they deserved, Bogle beating Wilson’s biscuit wrists after a one-two with Ramazani four minutes into the second half. Again, the move began with winning the ball and restarting with Illan Meslier, before Rodon and Gnonto pressed fast forward with incisive forward passes that opened up space for the rest of their teammates.

With two tricky away trips in the space of four days coming up, the cushion allowed Leeds to sit back and see whether Coventry could be proactive themselves. They could only try, but with Rodon pocketing striker Ellis Simms, they were terrible at it. Instead, Leeds held their nerve, like a boxer waiting for the right moment to counterpunch. When Rodon stole the ball inside his own penalty area, his teammates recognised Coventry had committed just enough players forward, Gruev calmly linking up with Joseph and Tanaka, who freed Gnonto down the right wing with the vision we’ve been hoping for. Gnonto was exhausted by the time he reached the byline, but still had the presence of mind to give sub Joel Piroe the opportunity to shoot through Wilson, Leeds winning by three clear goals or more for the first time since visiting Swansea in February.

Those trips to Norwich and Sunderland, plus the visit of Sheffield United to Elland Road in the first game after the international break, will provide a sterner test of whether this Leeds squad can live up to the anticipation. A bit of jeopardy might be what they need to shift through the gears they hinted at possessing against Coventry, banish the ghosts of last season once and for all, and let us all enjoy looking forwards rather than backwards.