Leeds United 3-2 Millwall: Believing The Script
There’s no way of scripting Elland Road. Whatever is said beforehand gets lost as soon the ball is kicked. "That's why football is the best sport in the world," Bielsa said this week, "Because before the games you can have one feeling, but after the games the feeling is different with the result."
Elland Road is a character in this season’s promotion challenge drama. Its motivation is clear: to support the team back to the Premier League. Its role, though, is less defined; several pages of the script are missing or misprinted.
Last time out, against Sheffield United, Elland Road was overblown and melodramatic. Pontus Jansson asked the crowd to come down an hour early for the warm-ups before "the biggest game of our lives." Mateusz Klich said it would be "one of the most important games" and that he wished it could be an evening kick-off so Elland Road could be at its best; "under the lights would be even better." In the end Elland Road missed its cue and couldn’t find its character, and defeat in the biggest game of the players’ lives only made the remaining eight games even bigger.
"When we started conceding efforts in the second half, the fans had a memory linking with the difficulty that they are suffering in the last few years," said Marcelo Bielsa, assessing the stadium in the Sheffield United match. "It's something we can understand. The fans showed these doubts from these memories."
As ever Bielsa took intuitive hold on a truth about Leeds United that dozens of managers and players have grasped at but missed; that the support from the terraces can be as fragile as it can be ferocious, not because the fans are fickle, but because they’re frightened. Like converting Kalvin Phillips to centre-back, Bielsa asks a lot of Elland Road, but he doesn’t expect more than it can deliver. The feeling was that, with Millwall in town, the atmosphere would need to be controlled, the game given no more hype than any other.
An enormous mosaic spelling 'Believe' across the lower tier of the East Stand contradicted that, creating the hype the crowd had arrived ready to avoid. It was an impressive sight, gilded by one wonderfully anarchic fan waving their blue and yellow Sweden flag against the background of white cards around them. The script, though, was difficult to follow; Elland Road pinched the bridge of its nose, squinted at the word, and asked, What’s my motivation for this line? Believe. Believe? I can hardly believe where Leeds are in the table, I find it unbelievable that Marcelo Bielsa is our manager and Pablo Hernandez is our playmaker, and I can’t believe that we lost that game to Sheffield United. Do I believe Leeds will be promoted? I don’t believe I’m stupid enough. 'Believe.' It’s a positive message, but a more comforting act would have been raising thousands of pieces of card spelling out 'None of This is Really Happening.' Now, that’s a message I could believe in.
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