Leeds United 0-0 Sunderland: More than this

“If we want really something to cheer about at the end of the season,” Daniel Farke said, before this game against Sunderland, “let’s make sure that we play these last three home games like cup finals, make sure that we have the best possible atmosphere ever.” The fans, he said last week before the Coventry game, and on several other occasions, “are the biggest asset of the club,” and “they have to carry us also through difficult periods and difficult situations.” And: “once this club is united, just the name says it already, it’s the biggest strength of this club.”

And yet, the mood of the fans at Elland Road remains one aspect of Leeds United Football Club that Daniel Farke has not mastered. There have been plenty of victory laps and post-match air punching seshes, and fans have been staying behind to celebrate wins in numbers I’ve rarely seen before. And yet, while Farke wants the fans to carry the team through difficult periods, he has never quite seemed able to carry the fans with him, to make Elland Road feel like everyone is in.

It’s a clash between romance and pragmatism, and a contrast between Farke’s words about playing three cup finals and the actions of his team, playing as if they’re trying to take the sting out of the crowd at an aggressive away ground. With fans packed onto Elland Road’s 20th century terraces eagerly awaiting a big performance in a vital end of season match against an old rival (our largest ever crowd, our worst ever cup final), Beeston’s blue skies and cold winds were ready for a white hot atmosphere. And the home crowd responded, but what they were responding to was, with five minutes gone, Joe Rodon turning on the ball in his own half, passing to Illan Meslier, and making ‘calm down’ gestures to his teammates who, after already playing more than eighty backwards or square passes since kick-off, looked sedate enough already. While the players settled in for their evening of patient passing, the crowd became correspondingly irate. Ilia Gruev was berated for not putting Archie Gray away down the right. When a pass did go to Gray, in space on the wing, there were ironic cheers. When half-time was blown, with Sunderland reeling after Pat Bamford got behind the keeper but Leeds pulling the chance of a sucker-punch, there were boos. 

After the game at Coventry, Farke said he, “was not happy that we didn’t switch our play a bit more in order to use our space on the right side,” and yet both there and against Sunderland he seems to have been powerless to do anything about it. The pattern of the game didn’t change much and by the 82nd minute, when Farke tried flipping to all-out attack with a triple substitution, Leeds had played more passes in their defensive third of the pitch than in Sunderland’s. The changes had an impact – from then to the end, Leeds played 41 passes in the final third, 29 in the middle and just seven at the back – but there wasn’t time for that to make a goal. Partly that was to do with the referee, Tim Robinson. First he was the thief of penalties, denying two clear handballs. Then he became a thief of time, only adding three minutes for stoppages. It was a peculiarly deflating announcement, making sure Elland Road knew the game was up instead of inspiring a late rush to win, but teams can’t rely on games lasting longer than ninety minutes. Only I suspect from his reaction that Farke was, that he’d assumed Mateo Joseph and Joel Piroe, late as they arrived, would have closer to twenty minutes of playing time than ten.