Leeds United 0-0 Brentford: Transmissions
This is not, I should make clear, me wishing for a synchronised around-the-grounds transistorcentric thrillfest settling our relegation chances on the final day. But at least that wouldn't be boring!
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This game ought to have been this season's peak of floodlit football at Elland Road, kicking off on Saturday night after a tempting day of sunshine. It turned out to be the game most in need of an old-fashioned 3pm start to save it. Or at least it needed embedding amid the fixture list rather than drifting untethered alone.
I won't go as far as saying it needed old-fashioned transistor radios strewn through the stands, although I can easily lose myself in the romance of distant crackling commentary from some other game somewhere else, monobuzzing out of a speaker somewhere down-terrace. Your modern scores update apps are more than adequate, and at Elland Road they're just as hard to tune in to a signal.
But the atmosphere would have been intensified by signals beaming in from Villa Park and White Hart Lane if only Aston Villa and West Ham, and Tottenham and Nottingham Forest, had been playing at the same time as Leeds and Brentford. If the Elland Road crowd had been trying to impress on the players that the Hammers had gone behind after quarter of an hour, that Spurs had conceded just before half-time, that a few minutes after Forest went 2-0 ahead Villa had done the same.
The Peacock Ground needed something to distract from its own anxiety that the match sure wasn't providing. The pre-match chatter about a must-win match transmuted into self-fulfilling fear, and muted the atmosphere. A quarter-hour roar of vicarious excitement, even if it was courtesy of John McGinn a hundred miles away (just how I like him), could have shaken the shackles and changed the tone.
The match, with West Ham and Spurs both losing, was an opportunity: a chance to really go and get Brentford, to let incentive overcome shortcomings and add some purpose to the Peacocks' play. And it was security: the point won in the end was a good point, and Elland Road didn't have to be as anxious about Brentford's stoppage time counter attack and free-kick, knowing nobody was making ground in the relegation battle this weekend.
Instead of that rollicking tumult, Saturday was a barren night of fretting and vex, and it was Sunday evening before any Leeds fan, or player, could breathe out, taking in the scene. United are one point further away from 17th place, and Spurs are another weekend closer to replicating Leeds United's post-Bielsa doom spiral.
They're fitting a lot in fast, in north London. On Sunday they copied Leeds United's desperate plea of May 2022, when fans were asked to cheer the team bus down Lowfields Road before a game against Chelsea. This being Yorkshire, nobody was getting involved in anything so daft so police outriders escorted the team past a few dozen disinterested fans. Asked to do the same this weekend, Spurs fans went big with crowds, pyros, and chants for Mauricio Pochettino. The results in both games were the same: 0-3 home defeats.
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Tottenham combined that with a performance reminiscent of our actual relegation a year later. Feeling a little optimism after recent results, they took the game to Forest the way Leeds took it to Crystal Palace in April 2023. Then they, like us, conceded just before the half-time break and reemerged as shadows of the hopeful team from fifteen minutes ago. Javi Gracia limped on at Leeds through three more defeats and a draw. Nobody knows what Spurs will do about Igor Tudor, least of all anyone at Spurs.
If they sack Tudor, they'll be putting all their faith in the same coaching divine that gives Keith Andrews his self-confidence. Put the right guy in the right coat with the right haircut, and make him look the right amount of serious, and your team will surely win. Andrews, who always looks as if he's furiously failing to understand a joke, certainly has more faith in his aura than in his players' abilities. At Elland Road, when Leeds made two second half changes, he joined the ranks of coaches who can't let a game continue without having his goalkeeper fake injury so he can gather the players round him and tell them things like, 'Don't let them score a goal' or 'Watch out for the winger coming on, he's fast', with all the authority of someone who has just read it off an iPad so must be listened to.
That was the match's most egregious slump into boredom. At least it was something different to watch. It had been a dour night of nervous, lumped passes since it became clear an under-strength Brentford were concentrating on caution. Leeds had Lukas Nmecha and Brenden Aaronson intending to support Dominic Calvert-Lewin in attack, but England's number nine was so surrounded by defenders that no Peacock could get close.
Brentford compacted along longitude and latitude and fenced all the players into a twenty yard strip from which the ball could not escape. Leeds kept trying to pierce this defence, like someone trying to push a balloon through a dry stone wall. It was the sort of game in which it is traditional to yearn for Pablo Hernandez, but I suspect he'd have taken one look and demurred.
Instead, Daniel Farke tried putting Noah Okafor down the left where Leeds had suddenly started making inroads, a route shut off by Keith Andrews' urgent huddle and by United's failure to give Okafor the ball. Ao Tanaka was on too, and he caused some drama by being more willing to punt the ball at the goal, whether shooting or crossing. He wasn't accurate but a deflected ball was as dangerous as any other. Lastly, Dan James came on down the right, and put over seven of United's total of 32 crosses.
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It wasn't successful, and Leeds United's attacking stats are turning up at the edges like stale bread in the sun. No goals in four games, no goals from open play in five games, but Calvert-Lewin is off to play for England anyway, so go figure. And Leeds have only conceded three goals in those five games, which is an important counter-balance. There's a chicken and egg argument about whether sterner defending is sucking life from the attack, although an average of fourteen shots in each of the last five games suggests it's more about misfiring than missing ammunition. But it's vital anyway that, if the attack is going through a blunt period, that the defence doesn't give anything away. Team sport, innit, so when it's a bad day for the lads up front, it's up to the lads at the back to make sure that doesn't matter too much.
We can makes ourselves feel better with a little look around us. Burnley, the famous defenders of last season, have taken two draws from the eleven games they've not scored in. West Ham have one draw from ten, Forest have three draws from fourteen. Spurs have one draw from six. Leeds have failed to score in eleven games this season and have drawn four of them. Extending this, because I need the good cheer, Leeds' record when scoring once is W2 D5 L3 (1.1 points per game). West Ham are next best, W1 D5 L4 (0.8ppg), then Forest get W1 D3 L4 (0.75ppg), Spurs come out with W1 D2 L9 (0.42ppg) and Burnley's is W0 D4 L6 (0.4ppg).
Results without scoring:
| Won | Drawn | Lost | Points per game | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leeds | 0 | 4 | 7 | 0.36 |
| Nottingham Forest | 0 | 3 | 11 | 0.21 |
| Burnley | 0 | 2 | 9 | 0.18 |
| Spurs | 0 | 1 | 5 | 0.16 |
| West Ham | 0 | 1 | 9 | 0.1 |
Results when scoring once:
| Won | Drawn | Lost | Points per game | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leeds | 2 | 5 | 3 | 1.1 |
| West Ham | 1 | 5 | 4 | 0.8 |
| Nottingham Forest | 1 | 3 | 4 | 0.75 |
| Spurs | 1 | 2 | 9 | 0.42 |
| Burnley | 0 | 4 | 6 | 0.4 |
Does any of this tell us anything useful? Maybe it says Leeds United's defenders are better at bailing out their attackers than those at the teams around us. Maybe it says nothing at all, although it pairs well with my stuff last week about not giving up goals through errors. Maybe these sorts of pattern-seeking exercises are just what I'm forced into when the games are spread out across a weekend, putting more emphasis on permutational musing than exciting topsy-turvy football matches affecting, distracting and multiplying each other. Which is not, I should make clear, me wishing for a synchronised around-the-grounds transistorcentric thrillfest settling our relegation chances on the final day. But at least that wouldn't be boring! ⭑彡
A lot of us spent the 2010s pleading with Leeds United to even vaguely gesture towards being normal, and now here they are at last: officially not a laughing stock.
In 1997, a 'computer survey' predicted Huckerby would 'one day break the world transfer record at more than double Alan Shearer's £15m'. No wonder Peter Ridsdale was interested.
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