Brighton 3-0 Leeds United: A hard time for urgency
Farke said, "We don’t have to over-analyse the game," and I hope he was lying ahead of a week spent over-analysing, over-thinking and overall tearing up plans, finding a solution for a better Leeds team.
Gabriel Gudmunsson was well punished for his single-handed attempt at breaking Leeds United out of their mid-afternoon lethargy in Brighton. After ten minutes of slow moving the Peacocks were now grinding to standstill while trying to clear a long throw. Gudmundsson realised, correctly, that the ball was never going away unless a Leeds player added some urgency. So he made himself that guy, rushing out towards Yankuba Minteh, moving faster than any of his teammates ever since they got to Sussex.
And because no good deed goes unpunished Angel Gabriel's noble gesture only made him that guy, the guy Minteh easily escaped, the guy who was now out of position and chasing after Mats Wieffer into the box, the guy being bypassed by Minteh's outside o' boot chip to the byline. Perhaps inspired by Gudmundsson's new tempo, Lucas Perri ran out of his goal towards Wieffer, but that was no good. The ball was cut across the six yard box where none of the slow-moving oafs from Leeds were paying attention to Danny Welbeck, leaving Brighton's top scorer unmarked to score from seven yards.
Some of this is just the life of a newly promoted club. Some days you're only choosing how to lose. Drop deep and get beaten, press quickly and get beaten, go on the attack and get beaten. But it also looked like this season's bad habit becoming ingrained, of Leeds handing out early initiatives like Hallowe'en sweets then acting hurt and bewildered when their opponents take the treat then trick them, too.
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Leeds could console themselves that it took Brighton a long time to add to their lead but that had two factors: Brighton have not been playing well lately, and they didn't need to now. Being a goal down seemed to concentrate Leeds, and not just Gudmundsson, on playing some football. They took over all the possession, camped in Brighton's half, and had half an hour feeling good about themselves. Here was a team with a plan, at last: trying to play through Brighton's lower block. But here too was a team that absolutely could not do that.
In the second half Leeds had a second idea. At times Noah Okafor had looked too much for full-back Mats Wieffer, so Leeds endeavoured to set them up together more times, while Okafor left off about passing backwards or inside. This was a good idea, as Okafor was beating Wieffer every time, getting himself to the byline, looking dangerous, threatening Albion.
Just after the hour, though, there went Albion down the other end, Minteh doing the same to Gudmundsson. And when he swayed around the left-back to the byline and crossed, Georginio Rutter was at the front post, Diego Gómez was running between Jaka Bijol and Ethan Ampadu into the box behind him, and Gómez reacted quickly to Rutter's dummy with a close range chip over Perri for 2-0. Okafor, upfield, might have shouted across to Dominic Calvert-Lewin. 'That! That sort of thing!'
Six minutes later the third goal was a mess of Perri, Joe Rodon and Jayden Bogle's making, as collective dithering at the back let Rutter go to the byline and take his pick from Welbeck or Gómez in the box: after picking Gómez he hovered around behind the goal, looking faintly ashamed of assisting against his old club. Georginio is an odd character in the Premier League as he seems like the one person in the game who simply wants to enjoy his life without upsetting another soul: didn't work, Georgi, but thanks anyway.
Bogle was quite upset to be taken off after that goal and stood debating matters with Daniel Farke before sitting down. If Bogle was complaining that the whole thing had been a mess then he had a point. The defence has changed in the last two games to accommodate Perri and Bijol and has not settled into coherence: playing this way, it might never. I was hoping Bijol's passing against West Ham was first night nerves, while our first looks at Perri made clear why all the YouTube highlights are about his throw. And yet even at 2-0 down Leeds were trying to play out from Perri's feet, and his chip to Bogle was the villain for the third goal, the way umpteen chips to Gudmundsson had been causing trouble on the other side all day. Also the way Karl Darlow had set Burnley up a couple of weeks ago, so it's not just Lucas.
Perhaps at Brighton the short passing was with Calvert-Lewin's battle against 6ft 4in Lewis Dunk and 6ft 3in Jan Paul van Hecke in mind, but I still rate United's 0-0 with Newcastle, when Lukas Nmecha fought for and won every long clearance against Fabian Schär, Sven Botman and Dan Burn — a combined nineteen feet of centre-back heft — as one of their best performances. And there's never a downside, as Rutter demonstrated, to having the ball up the other end, away from the likes of Rutter.
This is where I put this game down, alongside the defeat at Arsenal and probably Burnley too: Leeds haven't figured things out away from home. The idea seems to be about taking the last two seasons of possession-as-defence and applying it to a new-look low block, against much, much better teams (not Burnley, but you know what I mean). But the application, from the bench and on the pitch, is not consistent: as much as I've advocated for Ao Tanaka's creativity, is he the right choice over Anton Stach if the plan is for a point and clean sheet? And when, now Bijol is in for Pascal Struijk, are him and Rodon and Ampadu going to talk about who is marking who?
But that's within the confines of the bench's instructions for playing out and hopefully playing through, when Leeds have looked most durable this season by playing long and getting around the striker. Let Brenden Aaronson scrap for the knockdowns. He can give the ball to Tanaka, if he's there, so he can set Okafor going with some quality. Then it's bodies in the box and let's see what can happen. Instead, at Brighton, attacking ideas seemed caught between two styles. With the patient build up not creating enough urgency, when Okafor did get into the box there were not enough players forward to help him.
This mixed up approach is reflected in the attitude to set-pieces. After all United's investment in height to take advantage of dead balls and their marginal gains, half the Premier League seems to be reaping large margins while Leeds persist with not putting the ball into the box for their big men every chance they get. This isn't the sort of thing that needs a set-piece coach, it only requires leadership and clear instructions so there's no debate when the ball is out of play, just tall lads forward and more quality on boxward deliveries than Sean Longstaff managed in Brighton.
But Farke, afterwards, said that, "We don’t have to over-analyse the game," and I hope he was lying ahead of a week spent over-analysing, over-thinking and overall tearing up plans. There is a solution to a better Leeds team, which is ultimately the solution Brighton have after nine years in the Premier League: better players. United don't have nine years right now, but do have Dan James and Wilf Gnonto, who have hardly been seen through injury this season. Farke likes to let his better players play well, and without sounding the 'Like a new signing' klaxon, both those players should be motivated to make more of their Premier League careers than last time they were here.
Angle two is that, almost imperceptibly at the time, Farke did put better Leeds teams out in the second halves of the last two seasons than the first. One of his strengths is one of his traits that people don't like: his self-confident realism, a consistent faith that his team will do enough to do the job in the end. "When you have ten game days, now and again a game like this comes around," he said, almost as if he'd been expecting to lose this badly in Brighton. "Today was probably the second game in the season, after Arsenal, when we say the opponent was better," he went on, underlining the impression that such a performance and such a result was baked in, planned for and calculated as a high possibility before taking the trip.
Which on one hand is awful defeatism. But on the other hand it's realistic forecasting when Leeds are only aiming to win ten of 38 matches. On balance I'd sooner this spongelike absorption of the bad days than the panicked flapping of some teams around Leeds — Wolves in a state of revolt, West Ham and Nottingham Forest ditching big plans after just a few weeks. But it's a fine balance and, as those clubs are showing, the pressure of the Premier League doesn't always allow for gradual ascents towards better times. It is, as wakeful Gudmundsson discovered to his cost, an urgent and punishing league from the first moment to the last. ⭑彡