Liverpool 0-0 Leeds United: the title is survival
Holding Liverpool to nil this way marked a complete and completely necessary inversion of Farke's promotion chasing Leeds United into a team chasing 17th with the same hunger, and the same sense of glory. Expectations have been lowered. And despite that, excitement has increased.
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Leeds scored their third goal while Cantona was off the pitch, having stitches. When he finally reappeared on the touchline he was no longer Elland Road's king in absentia, but a fallen one. Tomas Brolin had taken his crown.
Brett Ormerod, Brian Montenegro, Cameron Borthwick-Jackson, Carl Dickinson, Charlie Cresswell, Chris Dawson, Clarke Odour, Cody Drameh, Connor Roberts, Conor Shaughnessy, Crysencio Summerville, Curtis Weston.
Not necessarily the best of the rest but, you know, the rest.
At full-time at Anfield Leeds United's defenders and goalkeeper gathered in their penalty area in front of the Kop to celebrate a clean sheet and an away point as if it was a win. Defenders, in this case, soon meant all fifteen players involved in getting something out of a match projected, in pre-season, as worth nothing. They hugged and high-fived and heyyyyed at each other, huddling as happily as some of them had back in May.
Of all United's performances in the last few unbeaten weeks, perhaps this was the most significant. Holding Liverpool to nil this way marked a complete and completely necessary inversion of Daniel Farke's promotion chasing Leeds United, 2023-2025, into a team chasing 17th in the Premier League with the same hunger, and the same sense of glory. Expectations have been lowered. And despite that, excitement has increased.
At Anfield, Leeds did to Liverpool what many teams tried — and usually failed — to do to Leeds last season. An altered line-up built upon busparking principles let the Reds have 68 per cent possession — and more than 80 per cent of the final fifteen minutes — and just four shots on target. Only two were from inside the penalty area and just one, from thirty yards, happened in the second half.
There were blocks and saves and last ditch heroics, a lot of them from Ethan Ampadu; and there were pounding clearances, usually from Pascal Struijk when he lost patience with his teammates' attempts to play out of danger. There were spells when Leeds couldn't get out of their own defensive third, but these were some of their best moments because their staunchness only upset Liverpool even more. And there were leading performances from reserves like Ilia Gruev, James Justin and in particular the debutant Sebastiaan Bornauw, who didn't grow in confidence through the match but started with all the conviction of a seasoned top level player.
But most of all Liverpool were given no options to attack with by Leeds United's disciplined marking. Every pass was into danger, every space was made small by watchful white shirts, every move forward was a move towards losing the ball. The home fans were frustrated because they thought their team wouldn't attack. The truth was they couldn't.
This is not Leeds United's first promotion...
Relive the glories of 2020 and 1990 — and 1964, 1956, 1932, 1928 and 1924, too.
For two seasons we watched teams in the Championship trying to do this to Leeds United. And for two seasons we watched players like Crysencio Summerville and Manor Solomon overcoming them. Here, Leeds started with Lucas Nmecha up front alone then swapped him for Dominic Calvert-Lewin, who demonstrated his sharp form by burying his one chance from close range past Alisson while marginally offside. Those efforts were more incisive, and ultimately worth the same, as the expensive combined work of Florian Wirtz, Hugo Ekitike, Jeremie Frimpong, Cody Gakpo, Federico Chiesa and outrageous wonderkid Rio Ngumoha.
In the long run this effort might be worth more to Leeds. On the wallchart, planning out where points can be picked up, most people would put a big fat zero next to an away trip to the Premier League champions on New Year's Day in the middle of a compressed fixture list. Liverpool have already lost their chance of defending their title, so a point here or there is not much to them. Leeds, though, have hit the season's halfway in 16th, seven points clear of the bottom three, by greedily gobbling up points like this one, and the draw at Sunderland, and the draw at Brentford.
"If you want to win something in football, like titles, you need this mentality," Farke said afterwards, about his team's recent resilience. "And our title is, during this season, survival." It's like a title race, he said, in that a team has to be able to keep faith in itself throughout the inevitable setbacks — and there are even more of those to overcome at the bottom of the table than at the top. "This resilience, this unity, this mentality," Farke said, "This is really very special for a professional football side."
It's also very hard to sell at a football club like Leeds United where the glory years are only ever a thought away, and the idea of celebrating a clean sheet like a win or 17th place like a title can feel like an insult to our history. Farke isn't only up against the strength of the Premier League, which has rejected the last six teams to try staying up, but he has to cope with the expectations of fans raised on Don Revie's decade of dominance, on the gung-ho approaches to staying up of Howard Wilkinson and Marcelo Bielsa.
But what Farke has done, in recent weeks, is recalibrate our sense of success this season so that it more closely resembles current reality. He has made sure that not just the squad but the fans feel invested in a goal that, if we were to step back and let our pride back in, might feel beneath us. It's hard to hush the part of every Leeds fan that feels like our club should be challenging for the Premier League title at all times. Farke has just about managed it, without it feeling like a let down. In fact, fans are happier now than at the start of the season, when optimism despite ourselves could still allow top-half thoughts to sneak in. In its way, it's been as remarkable an achievement as his more publicised job-saving.
It might also be, longer term, why Daniel Farke will never be remembered as a popular manager of Leeds. Throughout his time at Elland Road he has focused on the job and the facts, but hasn't always been able to convince the fans to enjoy ninety point seasons or historically significant statistics. This is fine, as long as he and we accept that a manager doesn't have to be liked, even by his own club's fans, to be successful. The consistent tone of his tenure has been that of a doctor whose unpleasant treatment will be the cure in the long term. We don't like what he's doing and can't imagine how it'll work. Then, suddenly, we're celebrating drawing 0-0 at Anfield as if we, too, are feeling it as proudly as a title.
As well as a realistic response to the Premier League, in its way this result also brought us nearer to the real history of Leeds United than the version we feel in our hauteur. The glories of the glory years did not come easily. Anfield will always be remembered as the venue for the Peacocks' first league title in 1968/69, and songs of praise from the Kop for the country's worthy champions. But it was won the same way as this game, a defensive 0-0 that Revie approached like an away game in Europe, stifling Liverpool and playing for the clean sheet. Our 1992 championship was also sealed with help from a goalless draw at Anfield. Howard Wilkinson dropped talismanic playmaker Gordon Strachan, used Chris Fairclough to mark John Barnes, put Rod Wallace to more midfield work and got a defining performance out of goalkeeper John Lukic. It's inherent, in Leeds, to compete with Liverpool at Anfield. But it's rare that we get anything there through exuberant, expressive football.
The eventual paradox of Daniel Farke's time at Leeds might be how, by more easily accepting the realities of Leeds United's situation and history than many fans do, he has achieved the results the modern football club requires — this season pending — without ever seeming like the hero Leeds fans want their manager to be. He's been a purveyor and navigator of stark truths that Leeds fans are too demanding to confront. A lot of his tenure can be explained by the conflict of Farke describing Leeds fans as 'emotional', and fans reacting emotionally, while in the eye of Beeston storms he bonds unpopular Brenden Aaronson or untried Sebastiaan Bornauw as strongly within his squad as Joe Rodon or Ethan Ampadu. Farke often likens himself to a shield. His management of Leeds is not always successful but it is all encompassing, balancing clashing and contradictory ambitions and expectations of owners and players and fans, perhaps ultimately to his own detriment.
The current mood might be the best Farke has enjoyed since Das Firebeast mimed DJing on the promotion parade, but it might also be what condemns his prospects of longevity. By rallying players and fans around the idea that, "our title is, during this season, survival," he is creating an atmosphere of siege mentality. This month he has been reiterating that, "We know as a promoted side, you're always, in more or less every single game, the underdog." He has reorientated the campaign around the idea of being champions again, olé olé, by finishing higher than 18th. But unavoidably built into all that is the notion of Farke as coach for that job but no more, typecasting him as the manager who will fall by the wayside when expectations return to normal Leeds United levels because he's taken the club as far as he can.
Unless, that is, Farke can keep repeating what has brought him and us success so far, making Leeds fans believe in the immediate reality of what he's doing, while never looking like the deliverer of our higher dreams — until they're real. ⭑彡
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