Newcastle United 4-3 Leeds United: Barnes burner
Sometimes you just have to give up a game up to the fates. But then you remember the fates have Harvey bloody Barnes playing for them.
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The Baseball Ground's half-time song was, 'Brian Deane is a wanker', and Jim Smith's tactic was to keep five at the back but also two up front and keep up the sort of pressure that had striker Marco Gabbiadini trying to get to the ball through Richard Jobson's face. It worked.
Daniel Farke's teamsheet was full of defensive names. A throwback to George Graham's early days of one goalie, nine defenders, and telling Brian Deane to 'do what you want in the final third'. A show of three at the back strength inspired by Joe Rodon's early return from injury. Leaning on soon-expanding Elland Road for a policy of winning at home and drawing away. The best to expect from a trip to Eddie Howe's Newcastle United, who let in a lot at home but tend to win anyway, was a repeat of the stout 0-0 in Yorkshire that stabilised the start of the season.
So, what the bloody hell? So, over ninety minutes — plus twenty more of stoppage time — Leeds led three times and conceded twice after the 45th minute of the second half to lose 4-3. Even that apparent loss of match-winning control came amid the Peacocks' wild attempts to extend then retake their lead. The game was as likely to finish 4-2 to Leeds, or 4-3 to Leeds, as 4-3 to Newcastle, or six-all if you really get down to it. So I guess we take what we got — nothing — and chalk this one down to a good time.
I lean quite heavily on something Howard Wilkinson said when I interviewed him about the manic 3-2 match at Sheffield United that helped Leeds win the title in 1992. "Analysts say that 35 to 50 per cent of what happens in a game can be chance. Good managers try and make sure that they're at the 35 per cent end. Not so good managers leave it to the fate of the gods at the 50 per cent end. But then there are just games where you just know, despite everything you might think or try and do, that things are happening out there that are beyond your control."
That was Newcastle versus Leeds this week. Neither Farke or Howe can have planned for their teams to be recklessly attacking each other through fourteen extra second half minutes, or most of the 96 played up to that point, but to their credit both seemed happy to go along with it. Farke, despite the defensive tinge of his named team, said afterwards that he'd kept some tiring players on the pitch as long as he could because he had a feeling one of them might get another goal. After a congested bunch of games, with a ten day gap until the next Premier League match, there was a last day of term feel to Leeds. The players' reward for going unbeaten through seven tough fixtures was a free swim on Tyneside.
For the first half-an-hour Leeds United were actually amazing. The so-called solid players attacked with verve associated with the flair and skill — Noah Okafor, Ao Tanaka, Wilf Gnonto — sitting on the bench. That said, we might also associate those players with the vision or ability to make more of the strong attacking situations Leeds were getting into, but nonetheless, the starting eleven were putting on a lesson about how formations are less important than intent, about how who you are is less important than how you're trying to play.
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Confidence helps too. Does Brenden Aaronson score the opening goal if he hadn't scored already at the weekend? His opener, at the end of that ace half-an-hour, was made by him pressing alongside Dominic Calvert-Lewin, who when Malick Thiaw slipped rolled the ball forwards so that Aaronson, doing a viable impression of Gabriel Batistuta, could stroll over and welly it low into the bottom corner. Aaronson might be celebrating these goals with shrugs, as if he's only doing what he always does, but I suspect that when he gets home at night he's closing the door, looking in the mirror, and bursting out laughing with the joy of finally living up to the shoulder-brushing disguises he's been trying to show off to the world.
After Calvert-Lewin had put Leeds back in front just before half-time, scoring a confident penalty after Thiaw's handball, Aaronson had to answer again after Joelinton's equaliser. With eleven minutes of normal time left, more Leeds pressing and Geordie slipping gave Ilia Gruev the ball in midfield. As defenders worried about Calvert-Lewin, Gruev passed into space in front of Aaronson, the other way. Sven Botman made it difficult for Aaronson to cross to the striker, so he did the more difficult thing, stepping over the ball to make an angle and shooting, low and accurate, in off the far post. It's the first time, in his professional career, that Aaronson has scored twice in one game. Of course he celebrated by pretending it was normal and as expected, and all power to his confidence if he keeps this up.
The name on the shirt is important, though, and as I mentioned after the match on Sunday, Brenden Aaronson isn't allowed to enjoy nice things. Harvey Barnes, on the other hand, is a golden child hand-selected by the Leeds-hating fates to torture our team forever. Is it Paul Heckingbottom's fault? Did the infamous Leeds-hating and Leeds-managing manager, then of Barnsley when Barnes was a youngster on loan there, fill his young mind with Leeds-hating bile after hauling him off at half-time of Barnsley's 2-0 defeat to Leeds at Oakwell, the first time we saw Barnes, in 2017? Was that backed up by Harvey's dad Paul, who played for Huddersfield when his son was in nappies? Is his vendetta built on cockiness, from scoring in West Brom and Leicester's 4-1 chastisements of Bielsa's Leeds in 2018 and 2020, giving him an easily sated taste for Peacock meat?
Whatever the origins of his crusade, it felt personal in the first half and vindictive by the end. Leeds United's brilliant half-hour ended with Aaronson's opener as Newcastle discovered their own front feet, and Pascal Struijk got his mixed up. Only Pascal knows why he hesitated to hoof a dropping ball in his own penalty area, letting Nick Woltemade tee Barnes up for the first equaliser, but it was unusual. Leeds have been building their recent strength by combining playing out from the back with a new willingness to boot clear if that's leading to trouble. This was trouble from the start, Newcastle targeting Gabriel Gudmundsson's side and getting a cross in, and Struijk just broke.
Equaliser two, ten minutes into the second half, was class. Fair enough for this one. Down Gudmundsson's side again, Lewis Miley scampered with teenage enthusiasm to keep the ball in play, Bruno Guimares was left in space to try an audacious outside of the boot chip onto Joelinton's head, and the grumpy midfielder nodded that beyond Lucas Perri's grasping dive. Fine, be that good at football, see if we care.
It's hard to be so charitable about the after-ninety equaliser and winner, though. We should extend a hand of pity to Brenden Aaronson, who extended his arm to stop a cross on the edge of the area and conceded a penalty. He said afterwards he was "mad at myself" and it's a shame that we always have to take the edge off the good things he does.
Speaking of which, though, here's Lucas Perri. Both that penalty and the late late winner came in the curious circumstances of the goalkeeper dealing with two of many dangerous inswinging corners, punching them away both times. A theme of the night was Perri staying rooted to his line, not punching or catching as ball after ball came swinging into his six yard box, which always looks more frustrating than perhaps it is. When Big Lads are such a strong feature of Leeds, not only in the three centre-backs but scattered through midfield and attack as well, I wonder if it's deliberate to let one of seven six-footers deal with crosses coming in, while the goalkeeper stays alert to save like he did from Leny Yoro on Sunday.
In any case, these two corners came right at him and he pushed them away, then one ball back in was punched by Aaronson. The second, in the 57th minute of the second half, after Farke had succumbed to the necessity of changing five players and Leeds' organisation had melted, went out for a throw that was quickly taken and quickly crossed back in and despite Jaka Bijol getting the first touch on it, the loose ball was quickly shot into the net, on the turn, beneath Perri's slow dive and heavy hand, by Harvey Barnes. I guess if you submit a match like this into the laps of the fates then you're giving it to their puppet, Barnes, to do the one thing he was put on earth to do.
Could it all have been prevented? Well, yes, all of it could have been prevented. Leeds could have played as dourly as their starting line-up suggested and repeated the 0-0 they'd got from Newcastle at Elland Road. Leeds are different now, though, and we should celebrate that they can go hell for leather and score three goals and lose and still be eight points clear of the relegation places.
But other aspects are unavoidable, such as, being 16th in the Premier League and having a team that reflects that. The goalkeeper could have done better, but only Everton are allowed to have a top class goalkeeper in their bad team. And they're afflicted in other ways the same as Leeds, by having defenders suited to their station in the table, who can only withstand so much at the top level for so long. All footballers make mistakes, but the better they are the less frequently they make them. In the bottom third of the Premier League players are more likely to make mistakes, and that is multiplied by having eleven of them in the team, and multiplied again by the pressure they're put under.
Leeds had to defend eight corners in this game. The average against them is 3.5 and the they've not faced so many in any match this season. Newcastle also put over 35 crosses. Opponents usually average seventeen crosses per game against Leeds, and this was only the second time this season Leeds have had to defend more than 26 in a match. The game was lost late in added time but needed to be won with more goals in the dominant first half-an-hour, because the night went on too long, with too much to do, amid too much fatigue, for a standard newly promoted team to avoid some sort of mistake by someone tripping them up at some point.
Who am I calling a standard newly promoted team, anyway? Last season, Leicester City conceded four at St James' Park, but didn't score any. Ipswich conceded four to them at home and three away, without replying. The season before, Chris Wilder's Sheffield United lost 5-1 on Tyneside, their attempt to repair Paul Heckingbottom's version losing 8-0 to them at Bramall Lane. In the last two seasons only Luton Town have come up and gone up to the north-east and taken advantage of the ambient Keeganism to draw 4-4. Luton had led 4-2, but then Harvey Barnes came on and he scored the equaliser. The lesson of this week, then: Leeds United are doing better than the six promoted teams before them, and Harvey Barnes is a menace who must be stopped. ⭑彡
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