Derby County 1-3 Leeds United: No fairytales, but thanks
This season is for giving in to modern football's desire for turning itself into the worst kind of office work, for ensuring incremental off-field progress is supported by meeting predetermined on-field key performance indicators, i.e., not getting flipping relegated.
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The Baseball Ground's half-time song was, 'Brian Deane is a wanker', and Jim Smith's tactic was to keep five at the back but also two up front and keep up the sort of pressure that had striker Marco Gabbiadini trying to get to the ball through Richard Jobson's face. It worked.
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This was a classic Leeds United FA Cup tie the way I understand them, perfectly teed up for an end of season review video. 'In January,' the jolly voiceover will relate, 'Leeds enjoyed cup success from their trip to (Club A) and' — if it's a special year — 'in the next round against (Club B)'. Then, over brief footage but not commentary of the goals and only the goals, a change of tone: 'But there was to be no FA Cup fairytale for Leeds, as dreams of Wembley ended in defeat against (Club C). Meanwhile, back in the league...'
Also meanwhile was Daniel Farke, speaking after Leeds beat Derby County in the third round this weekend. "On days like this," he said, "really difficult away fixture against a really good Championship side, to progress is often the start of a fairytale. I don't want to speak about Wembley, but we're in the next round."
Well, let's see who we get in the fourth round, then decide how much speaking we want to hear about Wembley. In Farke's first season we enjoyed Pat Bamford's Yeboah impression at Peterborough, stumbled into a never ending round robin with Plymouth and got knocked out on Mateo Joseph's big night at Chelsea. Last season, Karl Darlow kept us in it against Harrogate Town until Largie Ramazani found a winner, and the reward was a much-changed team losing 2-0 at home to Millwall. Forgive me, please, if I'm not experiencing any bouts of cup fever just yet.
Which is always a shame, because I'd like the FA Cup to be reinvigorated with its old allure as a prize of, arguably, greater prestige than a league title. And I always like to feel excited about my favourite football team playing a match. But this season is for giving in to modern football's desire for turning itself into the worst kind of office work, for ensuring incremental off-field progress is supported by meeting predetermined on-field key performance indicators, i.e., not getting flipping relegated.
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I've been thinking lately about a clip of Peterborough United's owner Darragh MacAnthony losing his temper with some young Posh podcasters. One of the presenters put to him that it was not, "Hall of fame ownership, in twenty years, to have taken us from League Two to League Two," if they get relegated this season.
"You guys are bizarre," replied MacAnthony. "Let me tell you about football ... it's full of promotions and relegations, it's full of disappointments, it's full of ups and downs. It's a fucking wonderful rollercoaster. It's not always plain sailing, it's not always successful ... (in recent years at Peterborough) you always get a little bit of a flirt with a play-off campaign, you get a flirt with a promotion, you get cup wins at Wembley and days out, you get plenty of goals usually bar the last period of time, and you get some great highlight packages with players that come and go at our football club. Alright?" He spelled this last part out slowly: "En-joy it!"
There are lots of things to dislike about MacAnthony, like serially employing Darren Ferguson, but I'm on board with this as a manifesto for football club ownership. He owns and runs Peterborough United to give the fans and the town as good a time as possible within the means the club can afford. His KPIs are geared towards measuring fun. 'Did a lot of people see a lot of goals this year?' In those twenty years at Peterborough, they've celebrated four promotions and won the EFL Trophy three times, and their top scorers include players like Craig Mackail-Smith, Dwight Gayle, Britt Assombalonga and Ivan Toney; their top scorer has also been the divisional top scorer five times.
And yet a young podcaster in their bedroom is so rotted by modern football that they'll review that tenure as if they're a disappointed shareholder demanding to know why in twenty years there hasn't been Premier League growth at London Road. Since sacking Ferguson yet again in October, Peterborough are now 10th in League One, making that criticism of going League Two to League Two in twenty years seem even sillier, and still leaving an open question about what would constitute 'hall of fame' progress in twenty years. Were they expecting something linear? From a football club? For Peterborough, promoted every couple of seasons along a steady line, to now be competing in the Champions League?
That exact thinking is what has led a lot of clubs to spend beyond their means chasing the Premier League's golden ticket, and to plunge far and fast down the leagues because you can't quit and reload from your last saved position when your actual football club is going bust. And the prevalence of that thinking makes it harder for all clubs to exist in a world where there's so much bandwagoning instability. Perhaps MacAnthony's real achievement at Peterborough is simply making sure their club always has a team on the pitch, when around them there is so much that's so reckless.
I'm sorry about this detour into my pet-noire, the CEOfication of football by people who have played too much Football Manager and think the only point to the game is 'climbing', and who through no fault of their own have been thrown into that gameworld of prettied-up data-processing by the high asking prices for watching actual footballers kicking actual footballs, even on television (a grand total of two FA Cup third round games were broadcast free to air this weekend).
But it's relevant because, this season, Leeds United have no choice but buying into that world. And so far they're doing a very good job of managing fans' expectations at one of the most expectant clubs around. We feel entitled, as Leeds fans, to sniff at the idea of targeting 16th or 17th this season, a target that may include losing more than half our matches. Leeds United, obviously, should be winning the league. And the FA Cup, the double.
But there's enough about this season, with the West Stand expansion approved and ready to start, with the last two seasons while we were cast back into the Championship close in our memory, with the taste from recent weeks of what having a competitive Premier League team at our club could be like in the longer term, for most fans to be on board with this season of lowered expectations. There might even be an appetite for an open top bus parade if Leeds do stay up, although that might be taking things too far.
The point is helped by the contrast with the clubs below us in the Premier League, whose fans have all definitely been stretched too far. Wolves tasted Europe, and Molineux is in shock at hosting what might be the worst team in Premier League history. West Ham gave their heritage away on a promise of future success, and they've been beaten twice this season by what might be the worst team in Premier League history. Burnley just seems like a beaten place, not even capable of enjoying last season's defensive magnificence, as if they've been Dyched into nothingness. Nottingham Forest are at the start of their own Dyching, after qualifying for Europe last season and imagining, even after Nuno was sacked, that they'd carry on Angeballing to the top.
Sunderland are an exception as they can't believe their luck. Leeds United, alone, feel like a club that is comfortable with what it is trying to do this season, and how it is trying to do it. There was a brief flurry of interest in sacking Farke and getting on board the Premier League managerial roundabout, but with that averted, it feels like only remarkable destabilising would bring about a managerial change before the summer. This season is now about getting on with doing what we're doing.
What we're not doing, despite Farke's talk of fairytales, is winning the FA Cup. (Prove me wrong!) And we're not worrying about not winning it. There's anger most seasons, when the knockout comes, disappointment over another year of embarrassment. As long as we're not Macclesfield's next victims, I expect the reaction this season will be a sigh of relief without injuries, looking forward to the rest of the season without distractions.
Because what we're also not doing is taking a step back towards becoming something like the Derby County Football Club of January 2025. I freely, arrogantly admit that before this weekend I knew very little of them now. I was sure their kit would still be supplied by Puma, so that was reassuring. I wasn't sure they'd got into the Championship, rather than League One. I was dimly aware their manager was John Eustace, because he ended up there after Birmingham City sacked him in favour of giving a rare opportunity to up and coming young coach Wayne Rooney, who was bound to lead them into the Premier League.
And I was not surprised by the names turning out for them. Derby are 13th in the Championship, W9 D8 L9, F35 A35. They are the bangest of bang average. They have the Championship's Danny Batth in defence. Andreas Weimann, despite playing elsewhere in the meantime, is still on their bench. Ben Brereton Díaz is somehow only 26 and of course he's now at Derby despite his personally lucrative move to Villarreal and a £7m transfer from there to Southampton. Also trying to recapture old glories is 25-year-old, former £23m player Rhian Brewster, signed from Sheffield United on a free, which makes perfect sense: he probably didn't even have to move house. Captaining them was long-serving Blackburn midfielder Lewis Travis, who was key to bothering Wilf Gnonto, with help from 36-year-old 300-match Ram-clogging perennial Craig Forsyth.
It's the team you get when your club has been making everything about getting into the Premier League, failed, and forgotten how to have a good time. Eustace is a good coach who might get them further up the table, but are Matt Clarke — yes, he's there too — and their random scattering of oddities — someone called Oscar Fraulo just bought from Borussia Mönchengladbach, Patrick Agyemang from the USMNT talent-delusion machine — either a Premier League side in waiting, or a good time in the meantime? What they feel most like is Leeds United, circa 2014, promising the world but never exploring it beyond the Championship's mid-table.
Of Leeds United in 2025, in this match, there isn't much to say. Some reserves got some runouts, and the absence of an actual reserve league has taken its toll on Jack Harrison: practice as he might, the man can't cross anymore. Joel Piroe was more like himself, but blunter: taking early, powerful potshots but not getting them in the net. Perhaps he'll gain some international sharpness now he has declared for Surinam, for whom he'll be building a formidable new attack alongside Jay-Roy Grot.
The match drifted along for half an hour until Leeds, led by Ao Tanaka, lifted the tempo and won a penalty. Lukas Nmecha was felled by goalkeeper Jacob Widell Zetterström, who got up and kept Piroe's spot-kick out of his bottom right corner. Derby went up United's end where, perhaps convinced the referee was going to give a penalty for Gnonto's collison with Corey Blackett-Taylor, Sebastiaan Bornauw teed up Brereton Díaz who shot through Karl Darlow's hand.
Leeds just needed a little more impetus. They got it in the second half from Gnonto, fed up of being kicked about by Travis and Forsyth, who finished a nice move. Ilia Gruev slid a pass to Tanaka, who laid off to Jaka Bijol, and Piroe unselfishly dummied his pass so Gnonto could batter a rising shot past Zetterström. A couple of minutes later, Nmecha chased a ball into the six yard box and got it via Noah Okafor to Piroe, whose quick shot from the edge of the area was parried to Tanaka for a close up finish.
In stoppage time at 2-1, Harrison kept Derby interested by messing up a chance to play keep-ball in the corner. Inadvertently that led to United's third goal, as Derby sent everyone forward for an equaliser, and Sean Longstaff sent Nmecha running behind them down the left, from where he crossed to the right for James Justin to score. 3-1, job done, and no fairytales here: just another FA Cup round to wrangle en route to bigger, duller prizes. ⭑彡
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