Leeds United 2-0 Rotherham United: The Problem With Normal
At times you could feel the strain Leeds' players were under; it would have been easy to revert to last season's type, to concede a stupid goal, have a couple of players sent off, give it loads of bollocks in the second half when it was too late then end up losing amid boos. But that was then.
I wonder sometimes what it must be like to only watch Leeds United when they're good; to be one of the few thousand who swell Elland Road's attendances seeking pleasure, rather than carrying out some rote duty.
'We hear Leeds United are good now,' they say. 'Let's go watch them.' But what do they expect? It's not like when a West End show is getting rave reviews and everybody is going to see it; that show is the same every night, so whether you have a good time or not is down to whether it suits your taste. Going to watch Leeds United and expecting to enjoy it, well, it sounds insane to me; and it means putting your faith in the performances of Kalvin Phillips or Liam Cooper, show-stopping stars on their day, but if you spend enough time at Elland Road, you learn that those days aren't bought for the price of a ticket. You need crucial alignment of the stars; perhaps divine intervention. Or you need the nervous sweating in the stands to be matched by the sweaty memories of hours of work at Thorp Arch.
For 45 minutes this looked like an off day for Leeds, or maybe an on day for Rotherham United; it was somewhere between the two. Rotherham manager Paul Warne brought his players as if they were lambs to be slaughtered, but their pre-match video analysis must have been that Wallace & Gromit where they save a sheep, because he had no intention of allowing any harm to come to a single tuft on their wooly backs. A 5-1 defeat to Brentford on opening day woke Rotherham up to their new Championship pastures; Warne was using Leeds to show that his flock will not be messed with that way again.
This was new for Leeds in the league this season; Stoke City arrived and played like what they are, a bunch of highly paid losers, and Frank Lampard's Derby County played like what Derby County's Frank Lampard is: a novice, and he was schooled by a king. Rotherham ignored all that, stuck their biggest defender on Samuel Saiz, pressed our defenders on the ball and aimed for their big striker, to see how far they could get by putting the local Championship vernacular up against the fluent new vocabulary of Marcelo Bielsa, Salim Lamrani and co.
They got quite a long way by knocking Leeds out of their rhythm. Leeds were always the better team, but not by enough to score, and Rotherham were alert for weaknesses; it was a useful reminder that Bielsa has got Leeds playing better by making them work and learn and that it isn't normal yet. At times you could feel the mental and physical strain Leeds' players were under; it would have been easy to revert to last season's type, to concede a stupid goal, have a couple of players sent off, give it loads of bollocks in the second half when it was too late then end up losing amid boos. But that was then, and now there's a mad-looking bastard frowning at them from atop a blue bucket, with a prowling squad of comrades in his technical area looking ready to drag any weak links down the tunnel and out into the forest, to fate.