Fleetwood Town 2-2 Leeds United: Start Soon
Whether there will be anything more to celebrate on Saturday, I’m less sure about. But I’m certain it depends on Pablo Hernandez.
Pablo Hernandez looks good. The blue away kit looks good. Pablo Hernandez in the blue away kit looks good, so let’s not look too far past that, if we can help it.
Apart from, perhaps, the occasional glance at Kemar Roofe, who showed flashes of danger and one post-whistling flash of invention, a nimble turn and threatening shot in particular.
We can also talk about Marcus Antonsson, who scored an equaliser that wasn’t only necessary to win the game, but to save the season, if only for twenty minutes. Is that too melodramatic? Imagine if he hadn’t. Alex Mowatt was on the pitch by then too, for the first time this season, and perhaps it’s not a coincidence that Fleetwood were finally faced by the Championship side they’d been promised when those two arrived on the pitch.
That’s hard to judge. The second half performance was better from Leeds, but perhaps not because of any tactical changes or personnel changes, but because it had to be. After an insipid first half, in which they conceded another poxy early goal, Leeds grit their teeth and set about setting a higher standard in the second. That standard still only represented a minimum at best, but after 135 minutes of the season, it was a relief to finally reach that level.
Pablo Hernandez, throughout, was on a level of his own. Internationally cleared to take up the no.10 position that swallowed Matt Grimes like an interstellar black hole on Sunday, Hernandez used his debut to play as a no.10 and then as everything, all at once, popping up all over the pitch and playing passes and through balls of such searing intelligence they inevitably outpaced his new teammates.
It was exactly the performance I wanted to see straight away from Hernandez; quality and entertaining. One touch, shortly before the equaliser, took a looping ball out of the air on his instep before he twisted inside his marker. Leeds United players don’t do that with the ball; except for Jordan Botaka, who on the evidence of this game, is being incredibly harshly done to if Hadi Sacko is his long-term replacement.