Plymouth Argyle 1-2 Leeds United: Football, doing what it was meant to do
The game is better this way, trust me. And trust yourself, and how you felt when Solomon scored the winner. And trust the incomprehensible history of Leeds United Football Club.
Some football clubs can win leagues by ten clear points or more, settling contests early while hardly letting a single foot go wrong. Leeds United have never been one of those football clubs. Why would anybody want Leeds United to be one of those clubs?
I can't tell you I knew Leeds would win in the end in Plymouth on Saturday. I can't pretend I was that confident. I can't pose now as certain and sure. But I can swear that, the longer the game went on without a winner, the more I was thinking about how much better a winner was going to be. The bigger the low the bigger the high. The wider the gap between we'll never do it and we've fucking done it, the greater the thrill of rushing emotionally, and perhaps physically, through that space in the time it took for the ball to do what it was meant to do the moment it left Manor Solomon's boot.
This was the moment, in the 91st minute of the 46th game, that a lot of people didn't want. The stress of promotion that fans take from the shoulders of the millionaires who own their clubs — that we have to be in the Premier League, because The Money, because The Status — can turn promotion campaigns into a purgatory where, even though our club has Bournemouth (final day) and Bristol Rovers (final day) in recent memory as two of its greatest days, some fans were desperate to avoid the chance of great days happening again. Just drop Illan Meslier and win the league by twelve points in March, was the cry, and put a stop to every chance of the excitement that, for most of the season, people were missing from Daniel Farke's football.
Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman
The game is better this way, trust me. And trust yourself, and how you felt when Solomon scored the winner. And trust the incomprehensible history of Leeds United Football Club, I think. For every stick on the 'falling apart' fire, Leeds have another moment of holding it together so a story can write its own happy ending. There was simply no way that, after coming back to the club where he graduated and winning the promotion he missed out on, Sam Byram could end the season with the own goal next to his name that cost Leeds the title. Especially as it wasn't his fault. Mustapha Bundu, moments after threatening Leeds down their right, took advantage of Jayden Bogle being caught upfield to turn Joe Rodon round and round in the penalty area and shoot his shot, off the post and in off Byram. There had already been news from Burnley that their game was not going to make things easy on Leeds — Millwall going ahead, Burnley soon equalising. Leeds had work to do to save Little Sam Byram's season, and win the league.
No half of football can truly be called bad that contains Joel Piroe's pass around the full-back's corner for Byram to run onto and cross, part of the striker's late season audition as the new Pablo Hernandez we spent all season wanting, until the team outscored the division by 26 clear goals anyway. The first half was, to United's credit after all the celebrating, very normal for Leeds. 80 per cent possession, sixteen shots, but only two on target and the only goal going against them. Standard, so well done to them for coming out from under the champers and sticking to the plan. Four of those shots were by Brenden Aaronson and another usual failing was letting him do stuff: the players should know by now that he's a better player when you're not letting him do stuff. By half-time the agitation was general but, again, Bournemouth '90 was won in the second half, Bristol Rovers '10 was won in the second half.
And Wilf Gnonto equalised early in the second half. It took a few minutes longer than Lee Chapman's header against Bournemouth, and rather than coming about because Chris Kamara went rogue, this was a goal scored absolutely as instructed. Manor Solomon went up against, what was it, six players on the left? Maybe just two but he beat them all anyway. He crossed to the six yard box where as per Leeds it was the right-back, Bogle, rushing to the left post and flicking the ball on. Gnonto was behind him and made sure of putting the ball in. It was an easy goal for him on the end of it, but built a difficult and distinctive way, and the finish was essential. What United needed in this game, first, was to know that all their efforts didn't have to be for nothing. They could score at least once against Plymouth. They had more than 35 minutes and they only had to score one more.
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Meanwhile, the subplots were subplotting. At Turf Moor, the proto-title goal was scored for Burnley by Jaidon Anthony, his eighth of the season — plus seven assists — after last season's loan spell with Leeds produced a solitary goal. Anthony scored against Millwall by taking down a long pass, cutting across the front of a defender into the penalty area, and slotting into the bottom corner. He just loves playing for Scott Parker, so fair enough, but a Byram OG and an Anthony winner couldn't be the way the season ended. Plymouth Argyle were also having their absurd say. They needed a win and something like a fifteen goal swing to avoid relegation to League One, all but impossible, until the mid-second half scoreline at the Hawthorns — West Brom 5-1 Luton Town — caught the imagination of seafaring romantics. Those seemed to include midfielder Adam Randell, who began tackling and blocking and intercepting United's every forward move.
Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman
A flashback to 2016, when Leeds needed a big swing to make the play-offs — and got it. Honest. Read this and you'll remember everything!
Those forward moves were depending on Manor Solomon. At one point, when he cut in from the left and shot over the bar for what felt like the umpteenth time, I was becoming grumpy about his selfishness. Then I remembered the first half, when he'd cut in from the left and crossed for the 5ft6in target Gnonto at the back post, and figured he might as well keep going on his own. He wasn't quite on his own — all Leeds kept going. The team became odder and odder, Max Wöber not quite the modern day Kamara, Pat Bamford not Carl Shutt, the only one who didn't know he'd be replacing Bobby Davison at Bournemouth until it happened. Bogle was off, Mateo Joseph was on, Leeds weren't giving up but neither were Plymouth. Daniel Farke, at full-time, was pictured slumped alone in his dugout, exhausted by the ending to the game and by the pressure on him all season, but relieved by a truth about football that's forgotten by too much of the media focus: it's not all about the manager. The game is played and won and lost and drawn by players. Sending Joseph on for Bogle wasn't an important change. None of them were, really.
The important change was something only Manor Solomon spotted, at last, in the 91st minute. He spotted that when Gnonto played the ball to him, in off the wing, the two Argyle defenders either side weren't sure who should be marking him. The furthest back flung himself at the ball, missed, and left a gap behind him. How can a forward be so calm in that moment? The space Solomon was running into, with the ball at his feet, the grass between the centre-back and the right-back, was a field. This was the important change, a new field, new space, a new opportunity. He ran left and left, squeezing the gap to the left, using the space by destroying it, filling it up. And so making a new gap to the right. A gap? Oof. When Solomon shot, two defenders were upon him from left and right, one was ahead, the 'keeper was in the middle of his goal. "It's a moment," said Joel Piroe, "where I was almost stood next to Solomon, and I just know it's going in, and I know what it will mean for this game, for this day. And that's just such a beautiful moment."
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And that's such a beautiful alignment, of a player on the pitch seeing and knowing and feeling the same as the fans because that's the mark of this goal, something it shares with Jermaine Beckford's winner against Bristol Rovers in 2010. One of the highlights of that goal is Bradley Johnson, who has just played the cross, jumping up and down beside the nets as he waits for Beckford to put the ball in the nets, knowing he's going to put the ball in the nets. Johnson was not a player in that moment but the biggest Beckford and Leeds fan with the best place in the house to watch the best goal of his life. And that was Piroe's position, with the 1,600 fans behind the goal, and the others in Plymouth without a ticket, and the fans in Leeds and across the county and the country and the world all seeing, all knowing, all realising together, or at least, when their streams caught up to reality in Home Park. That it was happening. That it was worth waiting for. That feeling so far from winning meant an even greater thrill, the sensation of rushing emotionally, and perhaps physically, through that space between losing and not, between Champions and not, in the time it took for the ball to do what it was meant to do the moment it left Manor Solomon's boot. ⭑彡