Leeds United 1-1 WBA: Running out
The fear of a promotion race is always about future regrets, that if these two lost points aren't hurting on a sunny day, they might come back with a vengeance some bleak afternoon to come.
For a while everything about this game was a bit too a-okay and either Leeds United aren't set up for such smooth living, or our suspicions of it are self-fulfilling. Reversing the last fortnight of dramatic endings, Junior Firpo put Leeds ahead inside ten minutes and nobody seemed sure what script to follow after that. Usually visitors are told, after seeing Firpo, that it's time to eff-off home. And recently, after Leeds take the lead, there's only enough time to maybe sneak an extra goal from Joel Piroe before the final whistle blows. Neither applied on Saturday lunchtime. The game kept going on, and going on, and going on. This was not the next-goal-wins joy we had against Sunderland and Sheffield United, and it had Elland Road sounding miffed, grumbling.
The most obliging part of Saturday was the weather. There were clear skies over West Yorkshire, warm sunshine, an optimistic morning to end February and begin March. This meteorological and metaphorical gift has a name — Fool's Spring — when a fine week lulls you back into t-shirts and out to beer gardens only to revert, ten days later, to one more blast of winter, bleak clouds and grim, slushy snow. In football that's known as 'Millwall at home' and, if you want to keep your good mood going, don't look at the fixture lists right now. Just make sure your winter coat is still somewhere you can reach it.
There's still, still, with all defiance and suppression of inner thoughts, no reason to doubt Leeds United's promotion in May, if not before. This home score draw with West Bromwich Albion continued my theory that this season's lows are not so lowing as last time. When Leeds had off-days last spring, they had them by losing in Coventry, in Blackburn, 4-0 at QPR. This season we still got the defeat in Blackburn and, er, Millwall, and another defeat came from messing up a good performance against Burnley. Otherwise the team have still come out of their underwhelming days with at least a point.
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This weekend's point was capping a run of fixtures that were previewed as season-defining and so should be reviewed in the same light: during a tough nine Leeds won seven and drew two, scoring 24 and conceding three; seven points from the last three matches is a very good return and, if a couple had to be dropped, they were dropped in the right place. Beating Sunderland and Sheffield United extended the gap between two of the closest teams and our top place. West Brom, down in 6th, were the best team to give a point to.
They were also one of the best teams to play at Elland Road this season, which also helps the case for 1-1 being a decent result. The Baggies have a lot of good players and a good manager, Tony Mowbray, whose stance is that good players should know what to do. "We've definitely got the freedom to go and play," our old pal Alex Mowatt said before the game. "(Mowbray) says, 'I'm not going to tell you how to pass, you are professional footballers'." Mowatt, John Swift and Adam Armstrong have been good Championship footballers long enough to make it seem weird they haven't had more Premier League games between them; Isaac Price and Mikey Johnston brought young trouble to the wings. At the back, Kyle Bartley is another who could have played more at a higher level. While the knowledge throughout his team means Mowbray can mostly leave them alone, he might want to use some of his freed-up time to give his goalie, Joe Wildsmith, a few pointers on passing as his kicking was so wayward it became very funny. But the way Mowbray kept applauding encouragement to him every time a long pass ended up by the dugouts just showed what a very nice man he is.
Daniel Farke was less enamoured with the way his players were swanning the ball around after their goal. The early stages were exactly what we all wanted, a follow-on from the end at Bramall Lane that swept aside worries about complacency and swept Leeds into the lead, Junior Firpo making a centre-forward's run from left-back, Daniel James putting a precise cross onto his forehead for an excellent header in at the South Stand. West Brom had missed their own chance before this while Firpo was upfield, Swift jabbing a shot inches wide, but Farke pointed out that Leeds have been used to winning after taking the lead all season, and scoring just before the final whistle lately might have sharpened their feeling that the game was over with their goal. "The sun is shining, everyone in a good mood and you score early and think, thank God it's an easier game," said Farke. "We allowed ourselves to enjoy ourselves a bit, went for the most complicated pass, went into duels and invested just 98 per cent and then a good side like West Brom is able to get a foot back into the door." The foot was a header, another full-back scoring, Darnell Furlong appearing unmarked behind Jayden Bogle to head a crossed free-kick across goal and into the net, five minutes before half-time.
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The complicated fun had started with a pass by Joel Piroe that I absolutely relished, a Pabloesque curving through ball for Firpo that bounced close enough to Darnell Furlong to spin him round and round. But it was also close enough to have been cut out. The main villain of pleasure seemed to be Joe Rothwell, though. On LUTV, commentator Bryn Law mentioned giving Rothwell an ill-advised compliment at Bramall Lane, telling him, "'Another great cameo, Joe.' He wasn't happy with that. (He said) No, I don't want that." With the chance to start and stretch his cameos against West Brom, Rothwell looked desperate to extend his impact beyond dead balls from the bench, but was stretching beyond what the game really needed. He almost put West Brom through by turning into danger in midfield, miscontrolled a chance to intercept and send Leeds forward, tried to hit Firpo with a first time pass after a sweet back-heel by Piroe and a lay-off by Brenden Aaronson. That last was a thrilling one-touch move but the final pass was far from Firpo and Farke's message was, you're not Brazil, this is not 1970, and Leeds versus West Brom is not the time for o jogo bonito.
The second half emphasised that. Whether it was Albion aiming to rough things up, helped by a referee who was happy to let honest tackles go while punishing silly pulls and pushes, or whether it was United being uncertain about how to proceed now their one-touch excitement had lumbered them with a medicine ball, the fifteen minutes after half-time were of the rawest Championship head tennis 'n' turnovers. Between the teams there were ten headers, ten tackles, six fouls, fourteen losses of the ball and five clearances. There were three attempts on goal, all from Leeds, but one of them was Dan James heading a corner over the bar. The other two were shots by Manor Solomon, both blocked.
Leeds did, eventually, calm things down. Over the next fifteen minutes the header count went down while the shot count went up, for Leeds at any rate: eight in the next quarter hour compared to one for West Brom. Substitute Mateo Joseph went very close from a strong run down the left, cutting into the penalty area and crashing a close range shot off the bar. Joseph injured his ankle after that, though, and Leeds only had one more shot, twenty minutes later in stoppage time, when Dan James did his thing of getting into the box and shooting over the near angle of post and bar. This was seconds after West Brom had broken through at the other end with Tom Fellows ready to shoot and win it, stopped by Joe Rodon flinging himself headfirst between ball and feet then booting it clear from the ground.
It was, after all the euphoria against Sunderland and Sheffield United, a dispiriting reversion to the most frustrating elements of this team: plenty of possession, constant attacking, but running out of ways to get the ball into the goal while the clock was running down to dismay us. Farke, afterwards, said he was short of options to change things: he wanted to keep Rothwell on for his set-piece threat, to keep Piroe and James on for their recent scoring form; he'd brought Wilf Gnonto on for Solomon, but to get Largie Ramazani on the pitch would have meant taking off a defensive player, and West Brom were too dangerous for that. Some of the players were looking weary after the schedule of recent weeks, and the unscheduled emotions, but they were also the bunch that has pulled up the late winners to make recent games such a ride, so the option in the end was to let them keep trying and take the point if they couldn't make more magic.
Congratulations, in the end, to the well-named match sponsors — 'Simply Vent' — for capturing the mood in the stands at full-time, where fans knew this was fine and in fact was the point of building up a lead in the league, to neuter the impact of future missed points. The fear of a promotion race is always about future regrets, though, that if these two lost points aren't hurting on a sunny day, they might come back with a vengeance some bleak afternoon to come. ⭑彡