Aston Villa 2-3 Leeds United: Never Too Late
Only football can do this. Humans have done a lot of damage to this planet over millennia. But over the last 150 years some humans have kicked a football into a net at just the right moment and made it all feel like a price worth paying.
It's never too late to give up. Whether you're 2-0 down at half-time, whether you're fighting an opponent and nobody gives you a chance, whether you're battling against the odds in life, love, health or happiness at the worst times and in the wrong places, it's never too late to give up.
So, because you can give up at any time, you might as well keep going.
But keeping going is hard, because it means confronting challenges and fears. We were saying on the TSB Podcast last week that we might welcome a twenty point deduction now just to relieve ourselves from the stress of watching Leeds United carrying on with this attempt at promotion. Just losing to Aston Villa might have helped. Let's not win six in a row, let's not be top at Christmas, let's not put ourselves through the strain of imagining that 2019 might be Leeds United's year. It's never too late to give up. So why wait?
First this weekend we had Josh Warrington's superb effort beating Carl Frampton on Saturday night. At the first bell in the Manchester Arena Warrington was still, to many, the dental technician with ideas that his floss fists couldn't match, no matter how many belts those ideas and those fists were bringing his way. By the time the bell was ringing again for the end of the first round, Frampton looked bewildered and sore and the doubters, at last, were ready to give up. Warrington hasn't given up, and never will, and has taken his career to the point that if one day he gets beaten it won't matter, because he went first to the point where he became unbeatable, where so few others have been.
Warrington has drawn additional strength from Leeds United. He's spoken about hearing the crowd singing Leeds songs while he's in the ring, and how it spurs him on; having Lucas Radebe, Vinnie Jones, Gaetano Berardi, Jermaine Beckford or, this time, Liam Cooper in his dressing room and on his ringwalk is meaningful support to him. The through line from Warrington's performance to Villa Park ought to have been easy to draw, a path of inspiration from the boxer Leeds supports back to the football team he supports. But for a while it looked like Leeds United were taking the other option against Aston Villa, and giving up.
This Leeds team has form for that, because it's the team that gave up last season after Thomas Christiansen took them to the top of the table and offered them the chance of a glory season. Success became too hard. At Villa Park Leeds were quickly two goals down, unable to cope with Villa's attacking speed and movement when Tammy Abraham scored the first after four minutes; unable to recover when Jack Harrison gave up the ball, before Jonathan Kodjia span away from four players and passed to Conor Hourihane, who struck past Bailey Peacock-Farrell from the edge of the area in the sixteenth minute. Despite attacking with purpose between and around Villa's two goals Leeds were threatening, like in the 4-1 defeat to West Bromwich Albion, to let last season's soft underbrain take over again.
This time around, we might not have blamed them. Since the West Brom match Leeds have been assaulted by ill fortune at every turn. Not content with injuring players, the fates sent one of the best of them into exile and then, taunting us with a goal from Patrick Bamford that turned our medical bad-luck into a self-satisfied success story, they struck Bamford down again, smote Izzy Brown, and poisoned Barry Douglas minutes before the game. The return of Luke Ayling at the back brought a welcome aroma of confidence and VO5, but it was balanced by the fresh from the forest smell of Leif Davis being forced into his debut. After seeing that three souls was the price of Ayling's return, what might it cost Leeds United if they didn't give up now?
Because this was a football match, though, the 2-0 score at half-time mingled pain and opportunity. Harrison had been too much of the first and not enough of the other and was taken off. Jack Clarke was given the second half instead. At first the break only prompted Villa's most sustained attacking of the match, as if they wanted to live up to their lead. But for Leeds, Clarke wanted to live up to his opportunity.