Fulham 1-0 Leeds United: Slow boat versus showboat

There was no reason for Leeds United's defeat to Fulham to be so pointed, no need to drape it with heavy symbolism and obvious ironies. But the Premier League is not a subtle place.

Leeds played this game in front of a luxurious new stand full of people — when it wasn't raining — enjoying the wallet-emptying hospitality that contrasted with the old, the ramshackle and the quaint that characterises the rest of the stadium. It was settled by a set-piece, correctly identified by the data team's analysis of success in the Premier League and scored by a moderately priced new signing. Fans streamed away contented, off to the shops and the bars, while adverts encouraged them to buy a ticket and come back to see an upcoming game against Brentford.

This is how Elland Road is supposed to look after the West Stand is rebuilt and the team, and the fans, have adapted to the top flight. But it's how Craven Cottage looks now, and the set-piece that settled the game was headed into Leeds United's net. By a Leeds player. That's what I mean about the irony being very unnecessary. There was enough going on before Gabriel Gudmundsson walked over to the away fans, hands up, saying sorry for losing the game. At least his apology was accepted because it's better to get the comedy own goals out of the way now, not if or when the club is desperate for points in May.

At the moment Leeds United are desperate for goals, at the right end, not just through simple lust for netbusters. Leeds need some escapism because the Premier League is being too real already. It is possible to avoid relegation without scoring lots of goals, averaging a point per game and celebrating clean sheets. We can go along enjoying big saves like those served up in Fulham by Karl Darlow, reading Harry Wilson's powerful free-kick as it deflected off Pascal Struijk towards one top corner, tipping Kevin's swerving shot over the top of the other corner. "We have to make sure we're rock solid, have many clean sheets and to score here and there in order to win or draw a game," Daniel Farke said afterwards. It's not a bad plan and it might even be a good one but the comedown of scoring here or there is much, much too harsh for fans who were revelling in the sunshine of Leeds city centre a few months ago. Leeds need a goal or some goals to show to the fans and themselves that those proud, parading days aren't gone forever, even if we're only showing ourselves a mirage.

We need something to distract us from the real future, from Craven Cottage and Kevin, the 22-year-old winger from Brazil who, even if his white shirt was Fulham, was exciting enough as a substitute to have Leeds fans lusting. The other week in Uruguay, Marcelo Bielsa was giving the press a typically exacting analysis of modern attacking football, then waving it all away. "All this has an alternative, dribbling, which is the best," he said. If you have a player who can take on defenders and beat them, he said, "everything to do with (team) performance, it doesn't matter." So to Kevin, who played a simple game of stepovers and crosses no matter how many teammates Jayden Bogle called back to help him, whose twenty minutes were a swap for the other seventy and whose named replica shirts will have been swapped for cold hard cash in the Fulham FC megastore immediately after the game.

Visit the Leedsista shop

Kevin was everything, not only in Bielsa's sense of a dribbler who makes every other idea irrelevant. He was also the anvil of symbolism Leeds United's owners, 49ers Enterprises, must have dreaded encountering in the first match since the transfer window. I'd wondered how much booing Harry Wilson would get, and he got plenty despite only being a pawn between clubs scrabbling for leverage on deadline day, as did Rodrigo Muniz. Those boos were really directed upwards, westwards, towards the executives and investors who didn't do the deals to buy them. On the day, though, I wouldn't have taken Wilson over Noah Okafor, in his first Leeds start, who showed his own willingness to take defenders on and some capability of beating them. There wasn't much between them, though, and perhaps Wilson will wish he'd gone to Leeds to challenge Okafor, given how hard it will be to get a place ahead of Kevin after this game.

That was the domino effect Leeds were trying to gain from: that Wilson could move to Leeds because Fulham had bought someone much better. One problem with this is imagining that a club whose owners want it to be a 'top-five English "data club" in 2025' can only find Fulham cast-offs and big defenders in the data, not our own Kevin '25 at a price like Raphinha, 2020. I suppose they'll point to Igor Paixão, but he's no good to us either.

The club wanted Wilson and got Okafor and we've still got, in this game, Brenden Aaronson, but it was all nothing compared to Kevin's cameo beneath the canopy of the stand full of canapés helping pay his £35m fee and millions more in wages. Of course he played his debut along the touchline of the Riverside Stand, where customers are paying between £3,000 and £20,000 a season to enjoy sea bream, river views and, if they venture pitchside, a player Fulham can afford by gathering these guests around a grand piano in their new lounges.

That's a hard slap from Premier League reality. Players like Kevin aren't even the dream — he comes at half the price a top six club are paying — but even attaining one single Kevin seems to mean selling one's soul. Leeds United have lodged a planning application to do just that so in one sense it's just a matter of waiting.

But there, too, is the grinding reality of the game Leeds are trying to play. This summer 49ers Enterprises drummed up fresh cash from its investors by showing them a pitch deck that included a plan for on-pitch progression of finishing 16th this season, 15th next season, and 15th the season after that. That's three more years of pressure and depression trying to average a point per game at the bottom of the league before even thinking about looking upwards, looking for our own Kevin to lighten our days. That's also, sadly, realistic. Brighton, the club every promoted team wants to be, have just carried out a review of their work and written a new plan, their '2030 Vision' of the next five years. The new plan adds a new ambition: to be, 'Frequently pushing for Europe'. Not even frequently qualifying for Europe, even though they're starting their ninth season in the top flight. It's only now, eight seasons in, that they're raising their aim from becoming established in the top ten.

Brighton's path is worth a little closer look. I used to mock them for winning exactly nine games every season in their first four Premier League seasons, but it worked. It also wasn't until their fourth season that they managed to score forty goals. (The real uplift happened after their fifth season, in 2022, from 42 in 2021/22 to 72 in the following campaign.) There's a story in the goals against column too: in their first season up they conceded 54, 1.4 per game, but in the last three seasons they conceded 53, 62 and 59. That suggests the defence is as secure now as it was the day they started in the Premier League, and that's right, Lewis Dunk started the first game of 2017/18 and the first four games of this season too.

Perhaps the Premier League is the counter example where the journey is much, much worse than the destination. Or perhaps Leeds United just need a little luck, a little match practice, and a little less of Brenden Aaronson in the attack. He actually did well with one of the game's biggest chances when, in torrential rain just after half-time, Okafor and Dominic Calvert-Lewin sent Anton Stach to the byline, and Aaronson had one place where he could flick his near post cross, which Bernd Leno had also understood. Okafor had been on several trips to the byline in the first half and his movement could be nice in the second half, drifting inside to do more work with Calvert-Lewin. Route one — Darlow to Calvert-Lewin — had helped Sean Longstaff smash a half-volley off the bar, and the bravery or fitness to allow Ao Tanaka into our midfield might have got more out of the front-runners. As it was, Jayden Bogle was often the main attacking threat, getting one-on-one with defenders while Aaronson occupied the others, and beating them, but not coming up with many good ideas after that.

Gabriel Gudmundsson also attacked well, and defended well, and in a tight game made the difference in stoppage time from a set-piece. All we can do is forgive him that, sigh, and move on to the next week of the next however many years. Wolves away: in 2022/23, their fifth season after promotion, they scored 31 goals — 0.8 per game — while conceding 58, almost twice as many. They won eleven games and finished 13th on 41 points. Back in 2009, Fulham were building the foundations for today's club by qualifying for Europe in their third of four consecutive seasons spent averaging one goal per game. It can be done, but that's not necessarily good news. ⭑彡