Brighton 1-1 Leeds United: New Energy — Square Ball 7/9/26

Written by: Rob Conlon

Zoom in, zoom out

Zoom out and it becomes apparent just how far this Leeds United team has come. Six defeats in their last 34 games in all competitions, a figure bettered by only four teams in Europe’s top five leagues.

Zoom in a little closer and it’s evident that Leeds are still getting better. Forget the last 34 games; go back to the final home game of last season and the Peacocks’ previous meeting with Brighton. Dominic Calvert-Lewin scored a 96th-minute winner handed to him by a dozy Brighton back-pass, with Leeds defending the edge of their own penalty area for much of the preceding hour and a half. The only other time they came close to scoring was when a Brighton clearance deflected off the chest of Lewis Dunk and towards the top corner. Leeds’ xG that day was 0.39 to Brighton’s 3.06. Fast forward a few months and Leeds created more than double the amount of ‘big chances’ in this match than they managed across their two meetings with Brighton last season.

This summer, Leeds opted for steady evolution over full-blown revolution. More of 2025/26, please, just without the first couple of months. It’s a bold strategy in a league where the frenzy of the transfer window sends clubs loopy, spending billions buying whole new teams seemingly for the sheer thrill of it. I’m no expert, but I’m fairly sure the evolution of man didn’t start with a fish flopping onto the shore and immediately beginning to scroll through TikTok, although that might explain how civilisation has ended up deeming creatures like Stuart Attwell capable of officiating Premier League fixtures.

Sometimes a team has to learn to walk before they can run. Sometimes a team just has to get a good goalkeeper and a couple of new centre-halves. As Gabi Gudmundsson said after Leeds’ draw on the South Coast: “We showed today again that we are very hard to beat, and it takes a lot. Credit to all the fighting, all the players who came in as well. They gave us the new energy we needed.”

If the first four games of 2026/27 are anything to go by, then Daniel Farke seems to be gradually evolving as a manager alongside his players. After a rare half-time tactical switch helped Leeds turn a defeat into a draw against Brentford, Farke made two unexpected changes to his starting XI at Brighton, dropping Jaka Bijol for Nico Elvedi even though he’d already rearranged his defence with Joe Rodon injured and introducing Ao Tanaka to his midfield, opting for Tanaka’s calm on the ball instead of Brenden Aaronson’s jittery restlessness.

Elvedi and Tanaka were both involved in the goal that put Leeds ahead, Elvedi turning a smart cross onto Calvert-Lewin’s head that forced a save from Bart Verbruggen, with Tanaka’s follow-up tapped in by Jayden Bogle. That Tanaka didn’t score himself was a warning of what was to follow, the midfielder hitting the bar after meeting a corner on the volley and having a goal ruled out after toe-poking Anton Stach’s devilish delivery into the back of the net because his armpit was offside. See also: Calvert-Lewin failing to score after rounding Verbruggen as his shot was cleared by Dunk, Stach hitting the ‘keeper rather than bottom corner when a chance dropped to him on the edge of the six-yard box and Lukas Nmecha latching onto Harry Wilson’s pass into the penalty area only to fire wide late on.

Rather than a reverse of Leeds’ draw with Brentford the previous week, this reminded me more of last season’s draw at Everton, when United missed more than enough opportunities to kill the game long before the hosts equalised. Once again, they were punished by the hosts as a deep corner was allowed to reach Luka Vuskovic at the back post, nodding the ball in from a yard out. But by the full-time whistle, I was as grateful for Brighton’s own poor finishing — Pascal Gross somehow shooting over in front of goal — as I was annoyed at Leeds’.

As I wrote after the trip to Everton in January:

The irony is that if this game was flipped on its head we would probably be feeling a lot better about it. Had Farke started with the wrong team and finished with the right one it would be hailed as a tactical masterstroke. Had Leeds been insipid and snatched a draw with a smash and grab away from home rather than given us a 45-minute glimpse of some of the best football we’ve played all season it would have felt like a point earned rather than two dropped.

Farke didn’t escape criticism as his changes failed to stem Brighton’s growing momentum after the break, even if they were sound enough in logic. Aaronson’s energy should, in theory, have helped drag Leeds up the pitch, but with the tiring Tanaka displaced from midfield, leaving Stach to drop deeper, United were unable to regain their grip of the first half. On the pitch for half an hour, Aaronson completed just two of four attempted passes, none in the opposition’s half of the pitch, and lost possession five times. According to Sofascore’s ‘total progression’ stat, rather than carry Leeds upfield, he took them 3.1 metres further backwards. Perhaps the pace of Dan James or new signing Jean-Matteo Bahoya would have proved more useful options, but Farke revealed afterwards that James complained of a back problem in the warm-up, while Bahoya only arrived in Leeds two days before the game.

And had Leeds capitalised on just one of their other chances, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Finding that ruthless edge to their attack is the next step in Leeds’ evolution as a Premier League club under Farke, but if the plan for this season is to repeat the blueprint of 25/26 only with better results, then four more points from the same corresponding fixtures as last term suggests they’re going in the right direction.