Norwich City 2-3 Leeds United: Love Answers
Old Leeds, or new Leeds? With a 1-0 deficit the question, what would be the answer? Pontus fucking Jansson, that was the answer.
The pre-match questions about Leeds United's trip to Norwich City crystallised in one question before kick-off, which was, Was it right to start with Souleymane Doukara?
That choice felt like pushing luck too far, when United's recent form has felt like something — not luck — being pushed further than it ought to be able. Doukara had impressed in the League Cup against Norwich, and changed the game against Burton Albion, but to start with him — to rely on him — ahead of Hadi Sacko was a risk, with a lot at stake.
For a team in good form in the right half of the table, going into an international break, Leeds United had an unusual amount at stake in this fixture. And most of it was morale. The momentum built up since defeat to Huddersfield, nine victories behind us with a soldout Elland Road for the Newcastle game ahead, risked a jolt if Leeds didn't get the right kind of result from Carrow Road. Defeat wouldn't ruin the optimism, but it would dent it; Norwich, despite their recent defeats, was the first in a sequence of fixtures against teams a step above the sides we've been beating, and to lose in the first would have augured ill for the rest.
We're going to find out in the next few weeks whether Leeds United have been playing themselves into a mirage, above themselves, or whether this is themselves, under pressure, real. Selecting Doukara seemed like forcing that entire question onto the shoulders of one player.
He was in for his defensive abilities as much as anything, it seemed, so mainly because he's a big strong lad. Norwich's defence has been their own worst enemy of late, though, and with Pablo Hernandez at his excellent, creative best and chances being made for Leeds every few minutes, Doukara felt like a slight misjudgement. Until, that is, you realised he was at the centre of a lot of the attacking play, dinking one-twos with Hernandez and Taylor down the left hand side, and remembered that Sacko is the absolute master of fluffed chances, so he might not have been able to break the deadlock anyway.
Norwich took advantage of the fact that Leeds couldn't score any of their chances in the first twenty-three minutes by scoring their own in the twenty-fourth. We were looking for omens of how Leeds will cope against top-half teams in the weeks ahead, and seeing Robert Green revert to the opening minutes of the QPR game on the opening day, as he scrambled and failed to clutch a header from a corner, was not the omen we hoped for.
To be honest it opened a pit of despair because nobody, now, wants to go back to that, and yet here was something very Leeds United, 2011-2016; an ineffective first twenty minutes punished by the opponent's first chance of the game. Leeds, normally, go on and lose from here. Assuming the Doukara question settled for now — he was fine, the choice was okay — this became the next question when the teams came out for the second half. Old Leeds, or new Leeds? With a 1-0 deficit the question, what would be the answer?
Pontus fucking Jansson, that was the answer. There was no flick-on to the great, looping dink of a corner from Hernandez; it swooped right on to the forehead of Jansson as he backpeddled, and his neck muscles did the rest, butting the ball hard over the City defender on the line. Then there was no interruption to Jansson's celebration; he ran towards the away fans and then was among them so seamlessly it was as if the hoardings, the barriers, weren't there. Metaphorically, they're not; we've seen the photos of Pontus on the terraces in Sweden, holding a Malmo flag, and with kids in the Leeds end sporting Pontus haircuts there's a bond between the fans and Jansson that I can't recall since Vinnie Jones.
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