Brighton 1-1 Leeds United: On the line

There's usually a story when a game should be won but isn't, about not taking chances when they're presented, and that was Leeds United in Brighton. Enough had gone on, by half-time, to make Albion's late renaissance irrelevant, for Leeds letting themselves down at a corner and letting Luka Vušković head one in to be a footnote. Instead it was half the story.

Leeds being Leeds, obviously their tale of missed opportunities is a twisting one. Let Ao Tanaka be our narrator, standing on the goalline and — passing? shooting? missing the target from two feet? cleverly avoiding the keeper from a metre? After Tanaka's contact, Jayden Bogle outthought and outran Vušković to pop the ball into an even emptier net at the back post, but was that what Tanaka was expecting when he squared the ball away from an empty net and into an empty six yard box? He ran away with his hand in the air, celebrating, but as if he'd scored it. Is that what he thought had happened? Or was he celebrating the assist? 

It's all very confusing. If you know what Ao was doing, answers on a postcard. We've seen him popping the ball in at a back post, against Liverpool in a similar way, but that was the other post so better for his left boot from a better angle. Did he calculate here so quickly, that the net was with him but the keeper and geometry weren't, and bet on Bogle doing the right thing under the bar? Or did he shank it off his sidefoot, thinking he was getting the goal?

We may never know. What Tanaka did do here, when Dominic Calvert-Lewin's header was saved, from Nico Elevedi's floating punt back into the box after a corner, was help the Peacocks pervert the expected goals stats in a very fun way. Opta, who count these things, have Calvert-Lewin's header as 0.245 of a goal, missed; Tanaka's assist as 0.503 of a goal, missed; and Bogle's tap-in as 0.902 of a goal, scored. That's 1.65 of a goal all to score one, and it's sitting on Opta's xG race chart as a big leap of statistical dominance and a big chunk of United's shoulda-scored number. Aye, well, anyone can rack that up if they stand on the goalline and keep missing. Luke Varney, Opta woulda loved ya.

Apart from fun with maths, Bogle's goal was a reward for withstanding fifteen minutes of Brighton passing about and switching wings without aiming much at goal. Leeds were aiming more at goal with less of the ball, by sending Calvert-Lewin through, one-on-one, offside on a shot he put wide. Then Bogle scoring put Leeds in a good place in the game, on a platform from which they could and should have scored more, even ignoring all the xG accumulated for one.

The one goal Leeds got and the one point Leeds got was more than Leeds usually get from visiting Brighton, and by the end of the season the result might not matter beyond adding a good point away to a secure mid-table tally. So the game they played can be more important, and this was a healthy continuation of last season when Leeds United's games were often very good to watch.

Last season's good watches didn't include Brighton away, though, when Leeds lost 3-0, all woe. Gabriel Gudmundsson, back in the team after the World Cup and injury, was talking about that game after this one. "We are almost one year from that and took steps along the way from last season," he said, "to be honest, I think last season we would have lost here quite badly." I don't know if anyone told him how far back the bad games at Brighton stretch, because it would have meant telling him the last Leeds player to score there was Michael Brown in 2012, and that would have meant explaining who or what a Michael Brown was. Like wondering what Tanaka meant with his assist to help Bogle break that blank, some things are better unexplained. See also: Craig Mackail-Smith, who got two of his career seven against Leeds in that game. Gabi, just be glad you never had to worry about it.

Tanaka was a big part of turning the entertainment on this time. Scampering around behind Calvert-Lewin, pressing Brighton's defenders, never giving up on a ball, with his black hair bouncing in curls around his head, Tanaka looked a lot like Brenden Aaronson out there in the most complimentary way. Then when he got on the ball he played clever incisive passes to move possession into dangerous areas, and he looked a lot like Ao Tanaka. 

All this energy and good work between the lines was curious to see, because the answer to how Leeds could look without Aaronson starting every week was supposed to be however Harry Wilson decided it looked. Wilson was on the bench again, though, while Tanaka ushered in our new world of chaos discovering calm.

Tanaka had one of Leeds' big chances to extend the lead, when a corner broke to the back post and his volley into the ground bounced up off the bar. That was just after Calvert-Lewin had been in more control of the score, leaping onto Brighton's waywardness at the back to round the keeper and shoot, not hard enough to avoid Lewis Dunk's smart decision to let the striker run through and aim to make his clearance off the line. 

Anton Stach's big chance to make it 2-0 was just after the break, when a long throw dropped to him but, from an angle, he shot straight at Bart Verbruggen in goal. Moments later Stach was due an assist on an undoubtedly intended Tanaka goal, when he crossed a free-kick to the front post and Tanaka side-footed steadily and low beyond Verbruggen. But replays showed Tanaka was beyond the last defender and offside; a marginal call, but only because the last defender had also broken early, putting them both beyond the last line. It was tough to take but also a tough ploy, as the set-piece was asking Tanaka to stay onside without sight of the jostling behind him.

It was all those, it turned out, Leeds had to bury to bury Brighton, especially as the Peacocks were never on top. Brighton were having most of the game, but the smaller of the chances, until a second half change in emphasis penned Leeds back into their own box and increased the scale of Albion's chances. After the hour, Aaronson was needed, as was Jaka Bijol. Brighton needed Charalampos Kostoulas to finish better, dribbling past four but shooting weakly at James Trafford; they needed new striker Promise David to do better than kneeing a good cross over the bar from six yards; they needed Pascal Groß to keep his own shot down likewise, snatching at it after Nico Elvedi blocked his header. 

There were three minutes to go at that point and Brighton were chasing a winner. Their equaliser, compared to those chances, was a 70th minute disappointment: Maxim De Cuyper swung his corner to the backpost, and Vušković got between Gudmundsson and Stach to head it straight in. Leeds are supposed to be good at stopping those, and my mind wandered to last weekend when I was ticking off every first contact from every Brentford set-piece – Leeds, Leeds, Leeds, Leeds — until Joe Rodon went off.

Leeds, slowly as they were taking things in hopes of keeping their point, got close enough to Albion's goal to keep the end stages entertaining. There was a half-chance on the hour when some of Tanaka's best living between the lines helped Stach and Calvert-Lewin set James Justin up to shoot into the goalie's palms. And after Wilson replaced Tanaka he managed one clever through ball to put fellow sub Lukas Nmecha into the area, where his shot didn't curl enough to find the far post. That was a moment when you could see Wilson's class but it was the only moment, and the rest of his appearance passed in tetchy attempts to press that earned him a yellow card.

The forward lines should develop as Wilson and Jean-Mattéo Bahoya get used to things, but about the latter this was one of those chastening lessons about transfer deadline day. Leeds may well have signed a Usain Bolt speed-a-like for the wings, but that was the small hours of Wednesday morning. Saturday afternoon in Brighton came too soon for Bahoya to do anything but sit on the bench and watch, no matter how tempting the spaces in Albion's half as they forced Leeds backwards. That will come, as will Wilson's creativity. Assuming Tanaka gives him the chance. ⭑彡

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