Leeds United 1-2 Tottenham Hotspur: Help from here to get there

Overall it seems like Tottenham Hotspur have a better team than Leeds United this season. It showed in some of their touches and how quickly they made space to attack into, traits that Bournemouth had last week. It's in the scoreline, and in how their two goals were achieved by swiftly punishing United's mistakes. Mohammed Kudus was a dizzy threat, Xavi Simons had one idea of chipping the ball into the penalty area but he kept making it work. Rodrigo Bentancur is a leader for Marcelo Bielsa's Uruguay. They held, in reserve, a bench of quality players. They'll probably be near the top of the Premier League table when this season ends, and Leeds will be near the bottom.

So it is important that Leeds United outplayed them in every department of this match and marched off the pitch, chests out and heads high, flicking Vs at the referee and feeling hard enough done by to take all this out, after the international break, on whoever is available: as it turns out, Burnley and West Ham. Burnley, who built last season's promotion around a brilliant defence then sold all their defenders and now have the second worst goals against column in the Premier League — even worse than their expected goals against column, flipping how they did so well last season. West Ham are the only team that has conceded more, off a relatively benign xGA, which indicates that new manager or not you don't need good chances to stuff goals through them. Dominic Calvert-Lewin, this is your time to shine.

Leeds ended their match against Spurs revisiting some of their own Championship shadows, as Daniel Farke threw the kitchen sink at trying to equalise. Every fit forward was on the pitch and, as there aren't very many of those, Pascal Struijk was up front too. There was a hitch in how the players couldn't marry all that presence to this season's new directness: Ao Tanaka had come on too, and was busily and cleverly dictating with short passes in deep midfield when, actually, what made a chance in stoppage time was Karl Darlow punting the ball at Calvert-Lewin, and his knockdown being controlled by Joel Piroe, who did what he's good at, shooting on target before anyone realised he had the ball. Guglielmo Vicario, in Spurs' goal, was alert with a good save.

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Leeds had been better at launching long back when Calvert-Lewin had been the only target, and like last weekend against Bournemouth his was a frustrating case of not being allowed two nice things from one number nine. Leeds got the game to 1-1 largely thanks to him. He made much of Jayden Bogle's cross dropping behind him, jabbing a lay-off to Brenden Aaronson whose shot was deflected, saved, and popped in by Noah Okafor on the rebound. Like later with Piroe, Calvert-Lewin did lovely with not just his strength to win the ball but his awareness of where to put it, making his mind up quick under pressure to make a bad ball into a good ball.

But is it asking too much of Calvert-Lewin to have the same speed of thought in front of goal? A swift turn and shot from the edge of the area, after Anton Stach sent Okafor to counter, could have changed the second half from the start if the shot had been a little harder struck. But a gift from Tottenham's defence in the first half should have been buried before Calvert-Lewin turned that great chance into a hard one by getting his first one, two, three touches wrong.

I worried for Leeds at that point. They'd been better than Spurs from the start, and Joe Rodon was close to scoring when Vicario got caught under Sean Longstaff's crossed free-kick. Rodon's header came off the post, inches away from a big empty net, and from the second ball Calvert-Lewin flicked on to make a half-chance for Struijk. Then Tottenham showed some interest and, just as Leeds were quieting them down, seized on a mistake in midfield to take the lead. Leeds have come from behind recently against Wolves and Bournemouth, which is an admirable bad habit, like being really good at not having hangovers. But it'll catch you out, and I wasn't detecting the same resistance Leeds showed in those matches. Maybe it was the lunchtime kick-off, maybe it was Storm Amy bringing every available weather to Beeston, maybe I just can't shake off the way one goal at the Emirates became five no matter how much I try. Maybe it was how one Spurs goal almost became two, when Rodon was caught on his way down Elland Road towards the White Rose Centre and Spurs fluffed a counter with only Struijk and Gabriel Gudmundsson back for Leeds.

Or maybe I just need to worry less because I was wrong. It only took ten minutes for Leeds to get back level and get back to outplaying the visitors. 1-1 was the right scoreline for this because it was precarious. There was the aforementioned weather, and lots of it. There was the unmentionable referee, who couldn't decide what sort of game he was reffing and instead of showing João Palhinha a second yellow for miming that the officials were being influenced by the home crowd seemed to take his feedback into consideration.

Then there was Thomas Frank on the sidelines, alongside Daniel Farke, each trying not to catch sight of the other for fear that the rain and wind was doing to his own hair what was happening to theirs. Frank is dismayingly smart and frustratingly transparent like, for example, the way he lined himself up in the media for a plum new job for this season. And the way he fixes the faults in his own plans once he senses games going against him, and does it well. Frank will thrive while managers like Ange Postecoglou and Ruben Amorim sink because he's wise enough to never align with one playing style, so even if Spurs want to sack him one day, they won't be sure enough about what they'd be sacking him for to go through with it.

The Premier League, managers, and minding the gap

Here was a look behind the scenes of a Premier League club, a chance to taste the sauce they call their science, and it made me wonder if Don Goodman and Andy Hinchcliffe might qualify as deep footie thinkers after all.

LeedsistaMoxcowhite • Daniel Chapman

I'm not even sure Frank had much influence on this game. At one point in the TV coverage he was posed in his dugout, notepad on his thigh, pen pressed to paper, not actually writing anything like a kid pretending to start an essay. I'm sure he started making copious intelligent notes as soon as the cameras switched away but it feeds into my uneasy feeling that Frank's knack is for looking like a wizard while he spots and exploits the obvious. Sometimes that can be enough, though, and Tottenham's sustained interest behind United's full-backs was real, and to his credit.

Were the goals to his credit, though? Or even his team's? They were to Pascal Struijk's despair, that's for sure, as he deflected the ball in twice while trying to bail his teammates out, twice. First was a disappointment from midfield, when Stach watched Longstaff miscontrol and Kudus beat Ampadu to the loose ball and that was all three of them cut out upfield, Gudmundsson somewhere ahead of them, and Mathys Tel running against Struijk and Struijk only. Struijk did well to hold Tel up until Longstaff arrived with an angle to tackle, but neither got close to getting a foot in and Tel's shot deflected in off Struijk at Darlow's near post.

Second time was simpler. Gudmundsson slipped and will blame the rain. Kudus leapt onto the ball, dribbled in from the wing, and hit a shot that deflected in under Struijk's attempt to block it. While he kicked himself for diverting the ball, behind him both Rodon and Darlow had been fooled by Kudus' disguise on his shot, which was going to the corner they'd dis-guarded even without Struijk's thigh intervening.

Struijk is under pressure to keep his place ahead of Jaka Bijol, and having a £19m defender chomping on the bench is a good thing. It's good, too, that Darlow is trying to keep his place ahead of £16m Lucas Perri and has been doing such a good job of it. Leeds should be better when something like that level of choice is available up front, where as hard as Brenden Aaronson is working and as flash as Okafor is looking — and scoring — the abrupt alterations full-backs have to make when Dan James or Wilf Gnonto come on should give Calvert-Lewin some different opportunities.

As a team, though, Leeds need to stop exposing individuals to their weakest aspects, and that's where I have a few questions about how the midfield is cohering. While Anton Stach is the big signing, in every sense, it's noticeable that he was part of the Emirates debacle that has never been repeated since Ampadu and Longstaff joined him. They, not Stach, look like the strength in the middle, and that seems to have set Stach adrift and wandering up near the forwards when he might have been expecting to work his steel further back. There's another aspect about how quick he is to wield his weapons as, while Ampadu and Longstaff are well used to England's frenetic football, Stach can seem stuck on Bundesliga speed, waiting for the ball to do his bidding. All this gets solved by time and practice, and by the end of next season Stach could be one of the best midfielders in the league. But it was noticeable in this match that when Tanaka took over United's possession became more purposeful with no increased risk to their own goal.

Which is, as with Struijk and Bijol and Darlow and Perri, all good. If Leeds can help the new players adapt during a period of strength and choice, rather than throwing them in from fearful desperation, the better the team can become. As it is the team is neatly above the one point per game it needs to survive, and hopefully making fuel from the frustration that rewriting history on the back of an envelope — a point at Fulham, three from Bournemouth, one from Spurs — would add up to twelve points, same as Crystal Palace in 6th, 1.71ppg, giddy fun. The margins are narrow and the work is simple as long as this squad has more in it than we've seen, and Burnley and West Ham are lining up in a couple of weeks, coming in claret, to be sent away feeling blue. ⭑彡