Leeds United 0-4 Manchester City: Not that
Maybe we can explain this season through the pecking order that never allows Leeds in its upper reaches for long. The 1980s were revenge for the Revie era. The 2010s were revenge for the millennium. This season is revenge for last season, and Stuart Dallas' knee is a symbol of what it has cost.
Against Manchester City on Saturday, Leeds United had little to no chance to make things better for themselves at the bottom of the Premier League. Burnley had influence, and used it by beating Watford; Everton did all they could, beating Frank Lampard Junior's inconsistent old boys Chelsea at Goodison Park. Leeds can't rely on others during the rest of this season, but we can't stop them doing them, either.
The impossibility of United's weekend was summed up by their playing much better than against Crystal Palace on Monday, but losing 4-0 anyway, while losing Liam Cooper to hopefully a minor injury just before the game and Stuart Dallas to an awful one during it. All the while, Elland Road sang and chanted and cheered. As they proved at Selhurst Park, Leeds fans don't need a drum. They don't even need goals or a win, either.
A club-organised pre-match tifo? It gave the East Stand useful paper armament for pelting Jack Grealish, but otherwise I'm not sure why Manchester City were greeted by a card display spelling 'Yorkshire', as if Knaresborough, Doncaster and Hebden Bridge were coming together to intimidate the Premier League champions. At the end of the game, OptaJoe pointed out that, in the 19-3 aggregate, Leeds have conceded more goals to the two Manchester clubs in one season than any top flight team before. Yorkshire, Yorkshire.
A working relation of 'Yorkshire' to Leeds United depends on the addition of words like 'Pride of', because that's a contested status among the county's many clubs that we claim, or 'Republican Army', the Leeds song that puts us at the vanguard of a Yorkshire separatist movement that's hard to market as Premier League friendly. The point is that our club is in the biggest and best city in Yorkshire, but we're not much arsed about using Leeds United to represent all the other towns and cities that aren't as good. If Yorkshire means Bradford and Huddersfield, we'll just be Leeds, thanks.
The tifo was a trifle but it's symbolic of a club not understanding how to be its best self at the moment. The atmosphere, particularly the way it sucked in City's fourth goal as if it was scored amid an interstellar collapse, was incredible, but Jesse Marsch's attempts to tap into it, pumping both fists in the air as he strutted down the tunnel at full-time, struck an odd tone after a 4-0 defeat.
Our job is to cheer, and we did it. Marsch's job is to make the team win, and he didn't. There's a dysfunction that keeps cropping up in his press conferences, sometimes about how the fans need to learn about his tactics to know when to cheer properly, sometimes about him thinking the players have been frightened to play in front of us, when I've never known a beleaguered team get so much backing. The best way to encourage the best support at Elland Road is to let the crowd do what it wants. The players, lapping and clapping at full-time, know this, taking the support in without trying to compete with terrace hysteria. Leeds fans don't need cheerleading to do Leeds fan things.
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