West Bromwich Albion 1-0 Leeds United: Boys keep swinging
Hire whoever you want to manage Leeds, they won’t find a miraculous creative force here who Farke somehow missed.
Hire whoever you want to manage Leeds, they won’t find a miraculous creative force here who Farke somehow missed.
Illan Meslier has looked serious this season, barely cracking a smile until full-times, when with air-punching pleasure he seems almost relieved that another test is over.
After losing to Sunderland and drawing with Coventry, nobody was thrown under the bus. Nobody was dropped. While fans and pundits demanded changes, Farke stuck with the same eleven. And he kept on sticking until they won 4-0.
Leeds need to find a way of avoiding being demoralised by playing so well, of not becoming dejected by the chances that don’t go in, or bereft if this season’s opportunity doesn’t take them up. The obvious answer is to score those chances and get promoted.
For once our club, setting out to be normal, is achieving it. And it’s not enough.
I don’t mean to underrate Ampadu’s tackle to stop a Rovers attack, or Rutter’s part in the one-two setup, or Summerville’s patient selection of the proper finish, but just look at Archie Gray’s feet.
As we saw in those swash-buckling days of just a few years ago, a team that is “over-emotioned” will find more ways out of the problems they get into than a team that is “like sleeping pills”.
Maybe – and this is where I do a thing of skewering my own stupid arguments – maybe it’s not about the other teams, and what they do.
There’s a slightly dull undercurrent to Leeds manager Daniel Farke’s favoured football, which I guess is the price we have to pay if we don’t want every game to be a 7-7 shoot-out (don’t we? and why don’t we?).
What we should have done then, Leeds fans and Terry Venables, was go out somewhere together (one of Terry’s nightclubs) and get hideously drunk together (so he could pick up the bill).