Bournemouth 2-0 Leeds United: Don't do that, or that
The second goal summed up the second half. Bournemouth were incisive as soon as Leeds were disorganised, after Leeds hadn't disorganised Bournemouth enough to get a shot on target.
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Thanks, James Trafford, for coming up with an interesting way of distracting from all the chat about Leeds United's creativity or lack of and the personnel involved or otherwise. He bided his time, waiting until Harry Wilson had inspired a sublime goal of pass and move and scruff it in quality, and had it ruled out by the ref. Then our goalie kicked the ball to Bournemouth so they could score without even trying.
Well, we said we wanted to see Leeds do something different, and this sure was. Someone needs to tell our Jiminy that we don't do this sort of thing round here. Even Lucas Perri, for all his faults last season, didn't make any errors as outrageous as this. Perri just had a low aura of general mistakenness, a feeling that he'd concede without actually doing anything specifically wrong. Trafford, so far, has been the reverse, tempting The i Paper into asking whether he's the best goalie in the Premier League without actually doing anything specifically right, just carrying himself with a high aura of general correctness. Well, that'll need repairing.
Errors in general just aren't Leeds United's thing, which is why this one cuts deep. You had to look hard for Leeds inthe 'errors leading to goals' stats last season, even for 'errors leading to shots'. We conceded when Gabriel Gudmundsson slipped against Tottenham, Jayden Bogle gave the ball to Georginio Rutter, Joe Rodon passed to Liverpool. Everyone else was made to work for their goals.
Trafford topped all those boobs. Taking the ball from Tarik Muharemović at a goal kick, he seemed to realise at the last moment that passing to Ao Tanaka was going to be a dangerous thing to do. Tanaka had given up that idea, too. But it was too late to stop, which Justin Kluivert realised, dashing forward to intercept a half-hearted pass, flicking the ball between Evanilson and the empty net.
After the match, Daniel Farke advised Trafford not to watch the video. Maybe he'd be better watching Zion Suzuki, the summer's other big money goalie, ruining his good game by dropping an easy catch behind his goalline and costing Aston Villa two points. Farke said Trafford has, "all my trust and all my love", choosing to bolster his confidence in ignorance rather than getting him to study and revise his game. Perhaps that is the best plan, at Trafford's still relatively young age. He works so hard to project an unflappable aura that I think sometimes he's trying to convince himself, insisting so often that he just wants to enjoy football this season that he doth almost protest too much. Trafford wants to be the he that he can see, so, delete the video and keep looking at the confident face in the mirror. Leeds are not going to go and buy Gianluigi Donnarumma over this.
Bournemouth, on a streak of five wins without conceding, didn't need this present. Evanilson didn't need it either, a tap in for his fifth goal in six games. And Leeds definitely didn't need it, as they'd been pleasantly good for the first half-an-hour and ought to have been testing how the Cherries felt about letting one in for the first time in six. The game before that they'd conceded five to Chelsea, two of them in the first three minutes, suggesting there are depths of fragility at Dean Court that Leeds couldn't quite dig down to.
What Leeds did dig up, for thirty minutes, was something closer to the inventive attacking that fans are willing them to aspire to. Farke started both Dan James and Harry Wilson, perhaps diagnosing a lack of Welshness while Joe Rodon has been injured. Since promotion James has been too injured to play anything like his best but he started in a defiant mood against Bournemouth, spinning backwards away from Tyler Adams then beating Adam Smith on his way towards the left byline, zipping a low cross that was inches in front of Dominic Calvert-Lewin.
James was full of that purpose and determination in the opening stages, but succumbed to type after Leeds went behind. Breaking from a Bournemouth corner, he was given the canonical Dan James counter-attacking opportunity, but after belting his way upfield his cross was the canonical Dan James cross, much too high for Harry Wilson.
Wilson was finding things harder by then too, frustrated because thanks to VAR the best thing he's done in a Leeds shirt so far never officially happened. It was one of the best things the team has done all season. They played out sharply from the back until Muharemović switched play to the right wing with a high pass headed by James Justin down inside to Jayden Bogle. He held Marcus Tavernier off and turned to see Wilson ahead of him, in a pocket outside the penalty area, pleading for a pass to his feet. Justin was the triangle's third side and Wilson tapped the ball off into the box and his path, presenting a chance for a first time cross that Calvert-Lewin bundled over the line. With, replays eventually showed, a deflection off his bicep. No goal, and all that lovely football was struck from the record.
It all became much harder once Bournemouth had the lead. They're playing with confidence reminiscent of Leeds United in 1999, when David O'Leary's team won ten in a row during a larger run of thirteen wins from fourteen matches. The Cherries' five consecutive clean sheets were a mental blunt against United's goal-a-game average that relies heavily on four scored against Newcastle. Bournemouth pressed higher and didn't worry about trying to score another, knowing they were unlikely to concede and happy to let a second goal come if it may.
Farke said he was happy his team "played a really, really good away game here, did a really good performance", and perhaps like keeping the tapes away from Trafford, he wanted to retain whatever confidence he could from what were, it's true, willing efforts. Bogle and Gabriel Gudmundsson tried taking the game on, beating the wingers who were pushing them back one-on-one, forcing Bournemouth's press to take a few steps back. But there was no tidiness to the play in front of them.
Frustration redoubled because we expect Harry Wilson to be able to solve these situations, like a new Pablo Hernandez, on his own: for him to unlock Bournemouth's immaculate back five with his magical key. Bournemouth were too good for that, though, too compact, and Leeds weren't able to turn their minds to more pragmatic options like just wellying the ball at the goal. Farke did as Farke does when a game is there to be chased, bringing everyone off the bench who even looks like an attacker. But while he was throwing everything at the game, his players were not.
"In these moments we can be a bit more brutal and a bit better," he said, "it's something we have already addressed and will address during this week a bit more ... [we] have to score with a deflected strike and dirty goal anyhow, and this is what I'm hoping for pretty soon."
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Look forward to that against Tottenham next week, then, and Anton Stach concentrating harder on shooting on target. He had a decent chance to Longstaff the game on ninety, when Brenden Aaronson played against type by dictating a calm build-up and Lukas Nmecha's cross was laid off by Jean-Mattéo Bahoya. Sean Longstaff himself was pleading for the ball in space to Stach's left, then, but Stach didn't see him.
Soon Longstaff was pleading against his karmic punishment for levelling things at Dean Court last season. While confusing himself in his own half he was tackled by Amine Adli who, after Bahoya failed to do much about marking him, took a pass in the box and made it 2-0 to finish.
It didn't really matter, but it was a good summation of the second half. Bournemouth were incisive as soon as Leeds were disorganised, after Leeds hadn't disorganised Bournemouth enough to get a shot on target. The Cherries are good, though, and this defeat might not turn out as painful as the last two draws we've taken: Bournemouth's next games are Sparta Prague, Ipswich Town, Nottingham Forest, Celta Vigo, Fulham, Brighton, Hull and Viktoria Plzeň. I'd only imagine Brighton taking any points off them before they go to Arsenal in mid-December. Could Brighton vs Bournemouth be a title decider? Or at least key to the top four? What a world we're living in.
How different might our game have been? We have options: Calvert-Lewin's goal, Trafford's mistake, a time machine to take us into the future when either Wilson and Bahoya are dovetailing creative geniuses or Leeds have bought, as Farke puts it, £140m attackers like Arsenal or £60m players like Brighton. The Peacocks' present situation all relies on one vital thing, anyway: that James Trafford never does that again. ⭑彡
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