Leeds United 0-1 Manchester City: Cross sections
All the Leeds players looked to be having fun. The reward for their strict and superb defending was permission for free-swimming on turnovers, as if Leeds knew they weren't going to get much of the ball so were determined to enjoy it when they did.
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Pugh slotted in for a season of post-relegation delirium when fans were trying to reassure each other that this could be a better, harder working team than in the erratic days of the Champions League.
The sense of Leeds United is that the club does know what it's doing, and it has been winning this game with itself from the start. Winning is easier when you're winning, and when draws are helping you win and defeats aren't hurting you, you're winning all the time.
Well in then, Ilia Gruev. I respect this disrespect. It's only Rodri? The Ballon d'Or winning midfielder? So, yes, get stuck into him. A hard tackle on the edge of Manchester City's penalty area, not letting them out, letting Rodri know you're there, veering into a foul partly through Rodri's indignant reaction. A Leeds player kicked him! Him! Rodri! Ilia Gruev didn't care.
The referee, Pater Bankes, cared very much and got this all wrong. After giving the free-kick he told Gruev to wait around for a ticking off. The ticking off came not from the ref but from Rodri, and while I'm sure Bankes didn't intend for Gruev to stand still while Mr Rodri of Manchester City had a go at him, that was the effect. And that worked well for Leeds anyway because the crowd, already combusting, drank this like fuel. Ilia Gruev versus one of the best midfielders in the world. Get him, Ilia. He's nobody special.
The whole team was Ilia Gruev all through this glorious performance. There were yellow cards for dissent, for stopping a break, for timewasting — all given to Manchester City players as they were forced into overworking for their points. Leeds, meanwhile, had Gruev stamped on, James Justin bleeding from his ankles, Joe Rodon playing hamstring roulette, and discipline that should have earned them more than nothing.
I wonder about Rayan Cherki, the player who stamped on Gruev's shin. He got told by stern Mr Bankes not to do that again. Later, after not getting a free-kick, Cherki had looked ready to hack his way through Ethan Ampadu and take a petulant yellow or worse but slipped before he could go through with it. A mark of this season's Leeds is their cleanliness: there hasn't been a red card since Illan Meslier smacked Preston's Milutin Osmajic on Boxing Day 2023. Meanwhile Chelsea have had nine red cards this season. At Leeds, only Ethan Ampadu has missed a game suspended, but the team has simultaneously fought — with knife in the teeth, as Daniel Farke likes to say — teams like Manchester City into retaliations and complaints. There was a red card here, for Farke at full-time, but it felt like he was taking one for the team in return for their spotlessness, striding across the pitch to yell at the ref.
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The entire scene was Gruev versus Rodri at full-time. Leeds players were dragging their manager away from the ref. Manchester City's manager was blowing sarcastic kisses to fans behind his dugout who he'd been rowing with earlier. Bernardo Silva was trying to start something by cupping his ear to the Kop, but only got Jayden Bogle for his trouble. There were jeers, there were cheers, the floodlights were illuminating the anger and it was fun, because it's all panto really. It's what a lot of people came to see, and it's what Leeds United's players knew they could use to help them disrupt their visitors from the first minute.
Included in the raucous hostility was a hostile reaction when the game was paused for three Manchester City players who are observing Ramadan to break their fasts. And something the Premier League needs to remember, when it's making a marketable product out of the unique atmospheres of its stadiums, is that along with the good panto hostility you can end up with the bad, real hostility too. I often reflect on how attendances at Elland Road — 36,838 at this one — are equivalent to the population of a large town. It's more people than live in Wilmslow, and it's one heck of a social experiment to throw all those people into one small space together and try to take coherent conclusions from so many thousand various incoherent thoughts, motivations, intentions and reactions.
The headlines about Leeds fans booing Muslim players aren't wrong. It happened and it was ugly and a brief chant of 'What the fuck is Ramadan' left no doubt about at least some of the booing. But as The Guardian's Jonathan Liew pointed out on Sunday Supplement, the actual story is that 36,838 people at Elland Road acted like a representative cross section of the society they're living in. There are questions now about what Leeds United FC are going to do about their fans, but the better question is about what hope and what responsibility a football club's PR department has for drowning out the predominant mood being created by national front page headlines and social media's disinformation cesspits. A mood that then helps make news out of a football crowd behaving distastefully on a Saturday afternoon, because a lot of papers don't really publish 'news' anymore, just things that will make people cross. Or crosser. Beneath the veneer of tutting and concern at many of the outlets throwing up their headlines, there was certainly delight about the opportunity for farming lots of angry clicks for their advertisers.
Which means in the end that while it might be unfair to expect football clubs and football fans to lead change in the society around them, it is more and more necessary. Football clubs reflect society but they are also one of the few means we have of building community around values. Or, they were. We still cling to the idea that our football clubs aren't just cash generators, and are then confronted by a St Patrick's Day clothing collection, 'a limited-edition range celebrating the club’s enduring connection with Ireland', which is also being produced for Everton, Aston Villa and Sunderland. Sharing community means a £55 polo shirt now. The rest of it is being left to chance.
We need football clubs to do more, partly because there's nobody else. But also because, at Elland Road, that visiting population is set to be increased from Wilmslow to Braintree, 53,000 people, with a permanent neighbourhood of 2,000 homes being built over the car parks. Placemaking, which is what this is, is about more than buildings and spaces and transport in and out. Making the profit from developing Elland Road should mean taking the responsibility for what Elland Road is like as a place to live, work and visit.
But speaking as I was of opportunism also brings us to Pep Guardiola calling all his players to the sidelines, not just the three breaking their fast. "The Premier League says you can have one or two minutes for the players to do it," Guardiola said, while asking for more respect. But the Premier League also says that, 'The break will not be used as a team drinks break nor as a tactical time-out.' If we're going to respect players who are breaking their fast, should their overactive manager be yelling at them and their teammates about also breaking Leeds United's high press during a profound moment of religious observation? The rules say no, even simple good manners say no, but the referees just shrug and Guardiola gets to have it both ways.
These hypocritical dead-ends are everywhere in modern football and that is one of the sport's fundamental problems. Everyone says they want more respect, but they don't want that to affect them. That aura of untouchability spreads to encompass crowds who, watching managers — or politicians — freely indulging their worst excesses see no reason not to follow.
I suppose Guardiola had to do something at that point because Manchester City's players were causing him a lot of stress, while not seeming particularly flustered themselves. United's intensity alarmed the Blues, but Guardiola's players had the self-confidence to play through it. Their manager didn't trust them. He yelled, gesticulated, pleading with them with to kick long to two up front. They preferred relying on their composure to pass around their penalty area. Eventually Guardiola got his way and the ball went long. Pascal Struijk had been eagerly waiting for that.
Certainly all the Leeds players looked to be having much more fun. The reward for their strict and superb adherence to defending from the front and marking all along the back seemed to be permission for free-swimming on turnovers. Up around the City area were flicks, backheels and lay-offs, as if Leeds knew they weren't going to get much of the ball so they were determined to enjoy it when they did.
Enjoyment would have overflown if Brenden Aaronson's pinpoint cross, as he ran fleet-footed down the wing, had been side-footed a yard inside the post by Dominic Calvert-Lewin, instead of outside. That was the third minute, and a very different match disappeared with that chance. Aaronson had a chance of his own a few minutes before half-time, breaking from half-way, and Guardiola's body language was conceding a goal as soon as Aaronson had the ball. Me? I love little Brenden, but I had to see his second touch before getting as excited as Pep. That touch gave Gianluigi Donnarumma a good look at the ball, encouraging the goalie out to smother the shot.
City's players had established themselves in the game by this time. After being hemmed in for the first ten minutes, the pattern for most of the next seventy was that Manchester City had the ball, and still had the ball, and still had the ball, and still had the ball. Karl Darlow took it off them, plucking Nico O'Reilly's header out of his top corner just before half-time, doing the same to Marc Guehi's with twenty minutes left. If you enjoy a good save as much as a good goal, here were two very good ones. They help us call this a complete defensive performance, because every Leeds player had to contribute and did.
The difference was made in first half stoppage time, and the winning goal was a painful lesson about never switching off in the Premier League. You can't even say Anton Stach did anything wrong, but as Rayan Aït-Nouri ran behind him into the penalty area there was a moment's pause from Stach, almost imperceptible, a slow step that created a huge space. Half a second later Aït-Nouri's low cross was being tapped in by Antoine Semenyo before Rodon could find him. That was it, that was the decisive moment, one single step too slow in a match when Stach probably ran nine otherwise faultless miles.
Elland Road didn't criticise or condemn. One of the reasons the Premier League loves and fears the noise of the Peacock Ground is that a second half that at any other ground could have become sterile amid City's possession — from 25 minutes to 75, they had 77 per cent — stayed febrile as the supporters stayed with Leeds. With only one goal to get, United went back at them in the last twenty, and Jaka Bijol headed a corner just over. With more thought, they could have made more chances, or with more time had Peter Bankes added on the post-ninety timewasting or not blown for full-time with Calvert-Lewin attacking the penalty area.
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The 'refcam' strapped to Bankes' head had, until that point, mainly captured Rodri and co screaming in his face, and you could probably sell that unedited footage to a particular market of masochists. Now the lens met full-face Daniel Farke, who was red carded before he could start saying what was on his mind. Maybe one day football will come to terms with its addiction to disrespect, but it wasn't this day. That's good when it's Gruev and Rodri. Not so much the rest. ⭑彡
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