Brentford 1-1 Leeds United: Rewriting ninety
Tanaka's stoppage time equaliser against Liverpool rewrote the match into a memory of ninety minutes of relentless glory. Calvert-Lewin's equaliser here turned the first hour of stern brutishness into a memory of spurned initiatives, chances to win not taken.
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It's about growing up feeling like a weirdo, how much fun that can be when you find one friend who gets you, and how vital that friend can become when life won't let you live up to your dreams.
It's a journey through a football apprenticeship at 1980s Leeds United and a drinking apprenticeship following the team in the 1990s, towards discovering how the lack of a life skills apprenticeship can leave you stranded, with only a record collection and a good mate to cling to.
There's only so long a team can play football in bedlam, and sometimes they have to do what Leeds United did this weekend, and go to Brentford. After two nights of glorious disorder at Fortress Elland Road, Sunday afternoon in the Gtech Community Stadium was decidedly more genteel.
Some of the required gags write themselves, about the literality of Brentford's home being sponsored by a cordless vacuum company. They sure did unplug the electricity and suck all the atmosphere out of this place, alright!
But jokes don't account for the reality of Brentford's home record this season: five wins, a draw and one defeat, that to Manchester City. San Franciscan assumptions are that the ferocious atmosphere below Beeston Hill will be good for the wins Leeds need to stay up this season. Brentford argue that dust-free sterility is better for the points tally if not for the soul.
How have they won all those games, without 36,000 Leodensians screaming their opponents into submission? With a little subversion and some switched on forwards. Normally, a home team holds the attacking initiative. But Brentford play at the Gtech with as little as 24 per cent possession, not taking more than half the ball if they can help it. They prefer browbeating teams without the ball but with set-pieces, although they've only scored once that way at home. Instead goals come from an efficient clutch of forwards, mainly Thiago, who has seven home goals this season off sixteen shots, eight on target. Playing Brentford is essentially a test of patience, and a goal from Thiago is the punishment for switching off.
Leeds didn't allow Thiago a single shot. He didn't even touch the ball in the Peacocks' penalty area, and that was one of their main successes in this match. Another was using summer's Project Big Lads to nullify Michael Kayode's long-throws. At half-time the score was 0-0 and but for referee John Brooke's attempt to give a soft penalty against Gabriel Gudmundsson for caressing Dango Ouattara in an offside position, and Noah Okafor shooting at the Bees' keeper after a defensive mistake, nothing much had happened. The game wasn't entertaining, but from a practical point of view, that might have been the best thing about it.
Which was hard medicine after the thrillfests of last week with Leeds United, and an unwanted opportunity to consider how much of that excitement was overstated. Daniel Farke's change to three centre-backs and two up front has been read as seizing the initiative, obliterating caution, choosing attack as the best form of defence. That's never really what happened if you accept that attacking with incautious initiative means having the ball. Leeds beat Chelsea at Elland Road by letting them have 71 per cent possession, and spent long parts of the game watching the Blues pass, keeping in their own shape, and booting the ball to Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Lukas Nmecha when they could. In a 5-3-2, before making 65th minute changes against Liverpool, Leeds only had 38 per cent of the ball. It was the old, lamented 4-3-3ish that swapped the game, and the goalscoring, around.
Visiting Brentford showed 5-3-2 for what it really is, away from Elland Road and its glorious rewriting of histories we decide to reject. It forced Chelsea into their joint-most possession of the season, and Brentford into their highest, and challenged them to do something with it. Which this weekend, because Leeds didn't get an early goal and Brentford with their playmaker on the bench preferred waiting for mistakes, made for dull times. Which was fine, as a point away was fine for Leeds United's purposes.
Keith Andrews has a reputation to establish now he's off the Sky Sports sofa, though. He's still aggravating with a microphone in front of him, coming up with this analogy for Brentford trying to break Leeds down in this game: "It's not easy, we saw Arsenal trying to break down Wolves, top versus bottom." He could only make such a bold statement afterwards by taking his Martin Ødegaard if you squint, playmaker Mikkel Damsgaard, off the bench.
Damsgaard is a little Danish spreadsheet in the modern Brentford style and had been involved in four goals this season. He created his fifth with a through ball that caught Jayden Bogle upfield and Joe Rodon with his hand in the air waving at the linesman's flag, or the Leeds flag in the flats behind the stands, or some imaginary flags in his head. Other Bees sub Rico Henry took the ball to the byline and his cutback was deflected from Jaka Bijol to Jordan Henderson, who booted it back at Bijol who deflected it into the net.
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This was supposedly a Boys' Own goal from Henderson in his 600th club game in England that we should all be happy about, but there's something utterly unheroic about Henderson. He feels, in this post-Salahgate week, like a warning to players who might one day regret mistakes in what they thought was their happiness. Henderson could be a pristine hero of Anfield, had he not left the fans in general behind and the LGBTQ fans he'd previously supported in particular by moving to Saudi Arabia for lots and lots of money and pretending that he wasn't. And he could have spent this weekend celebrating as a returning legend with his hometown club as the Wearsiders asserted themselves over Tyneside, were he not now so associated with Newcastle United's owners and had he not let Granit Xhaka take the job that was surely meant for him and decided to fiddle around mid-table on Brentford's behalf instead. Henderson looks out of place in West London because nobody can bring themselves to admit the unsayable reason behind his presence, that he's there by deciding to top up his already extravagant wealth rather than making the true Boy's Own comic book hero choices that all that money had made available to him. A goal in his landmark game was probably nice for him, but meaningless for everyone else there, and it was a Bijol own goal anyway.
And it put Leeds United into a tizzy. Daniel Farke was already contemplating changes — it was the 70th minute, after all — and as against Liverpool, Wilf Gnonto and Brenden Aaronson were sent on to revert the Peacocks into 4-2-3-1 and save them from a stance of stout defending that was good for as long as nobody made any bad mistakes. And it's important to stress again at this point that, overall, the exact shape isn't the crucial factor. What mattered here was having players doing things that suited them — like Aaronson, much more palatable in the centre than on the wing — and in a mood that means no match feels beyond them.
The equaliser was a lovely combination of fighting and elegance. Ethan Ampadu won the ball and gave it to Gnonto, won the ball and gave it to Gnonto, won the ball and gave it to Gnonto, over and over, each pass wide marking a turn on the kaleidoscope that shattered and remade the scattering of players in the penalty area. The more the ball went round the more chance Calvert-Lewin had of finding a space where he could shine alone, and it's not to underrate Gnonto's cross to say that with a sweet stroke of his right foot Gnonto couldn't miss him. A sign of Leeds this season is that they're scoring some delightful headers — Calvert-Lewin against Wolves, Rodon against Bournemouth and West Ham, Bijol against Chelsea — and this was another moment of airborne grace for the collection. The leap, the hang, the control, the placement: in his best moments, Calvert-Lewin can do things three feet off the ground that others couldn't do with the firmest footing.
It's a shame he doesn't do it more afternoon, but that's the greed talking. But his equaliser came so apparently easily, and so did a shot Caoimhín Kelleher had to stop that Okafor and Aaronson hit at his top corner together, and a low strike by Ampadu that was one scintillating foot wide and no more, when Leeds just seemed to put their mind to scoring. Ao Tanaka's stoppage time equaliser against Liverpool rewrote the match to that point into a memory of ninety minutes of relentless glory. Calvert-Lewin's equaliser here, with time left to win it, turned the first hour of stern brutishness into a memory of spurned initiatives, chances to win not taken.
Football doesn't quite work like that, though. Brentford wanted Leeds to take the initiative, as that's how they've beaten everyone down at their place. Farke's new formation, on its own merits, concedes the ball and the control to others. Leeds are playing reactive football, and that's being thrown at them as derogatory, but they're reacting effectively, and they were lauded it for it last week. And the old problem of perception and esteem kicks in against Brentford, of struggling to comprehend the respect we have to give our old League One foes, a Championship team now managed by the most miserable of Championship pundits. Understanding that Leeds United can't afford mistakes at the home of established Premier League side Brentford is as hard to fathom as being rungs below European aspirants Brighton & Hove Albion, or if Millwall win promotion and unveil a new managerial team of Don Goodman and Andy Hinchcliffe.
Sometimes it's best not to think over things too much and just take the decent away point home. ⭑彡
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