Sheffield Wednesday 1-1 Leeds United: Think about it
Most of the 591 passes went side to side and side to side and side to side then side to side. The whole thing was a collective failure to engage brains, summed up at what's supposedly United's new superpower, set-pieces.
This was a load of rubbish, befitting the Carabao Cup. It's an annual interruption of indecision, a carnival of uncertainty about its relevance, meaning, seriousness, implications. I'm sure Sean Longstaff was chatty in the build-up about how winning it on Newcastle's bench last season was one of the best days of his life, but I'm sure most people still find it hard to care. Save the interest until a semi-final when the matches might mean something.
At this stage of the season Carabao Cup matches are a weird extension of pre-season. Bizarre line-ups competing in forms they'll never actually take in the proper games. This was not a credible Leeds United first choice team, and Sheffield Wednesday will not play with nine-child defences any longer than they can help it. Only two of their players were older than 20, and one of them was so young that FotMob did not have a number for his true age. Perhaps they're older than they claimed? Ernie Weaver does not sound like an eighteen-year-old of 2025. Jarvis Thornton, though, just might be named after Sheffield's famous Cocker.
But what can we can conclude from this game other than that in this game, in these circumstances, Leeds United were a load of rubbish? That's probably enough of a conclusion anyway. Not everything has to be part of a larger storyline or a narrative arc, unscripted plot points to advance the real drama of the transfer window. Sometimes there are just games and they're not very good.
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This one was United's reserves playing attack against Wednesday's juniors' spirited defence: 80 per cent possession to Leeds, seven of 25 shots on target, 591/661 completed passes to 97/169. Wednesday won ten tackles and made eight interceptions, nine blocks and 42 clearances. It was like a trick game, like former Leeds and Celtic great Yosuke Ideguchi in that video with two mates taking on 100 schoolkids. Except Ideguchi and co had more ideas about breaking down their opponents' 30-30-30-10 formation than Leeds came up with on Tuesday against Wednesday.
Most of those 591 passes went side to side and side to side and side to side then side to side. True, there was not much space to pass between the Owlish young. Granted, Longstaff and Ilia Gruev are not midfielders of great wit. Joel Piroe and Lukas Nmecha, it turns out, are also not attackers with moves to make space when there isn't much. It didn't feel like the game had to be such a turgid stand-off, though, midfielders waiting for strikers to make runs into gaps that weren't there, strikers waiting for midfielders to open Wednesday up with pinpoint passes that wouldn't occur to them.
The whole thing was a collective failure to engage brains, summed up at what's supposedly United's new superpower, set-pieces. The new big lads were sent forward, Jaka Bijol and Seb Bornauw, for Brenden Aaronson to scuff a daisy-threatener into Wednesday's wall, or for Gruev to put a low shot miles wide of the near post, when the one thing a team of teens was likely to struggle against was a decent ball into the box while some six-foot-four colossi bore down on them. Going by body language, manager Daniel Farke's main complaint was the lack of thinking going on out there, and that was before goalkeeper Karl Darlow lost his mind on a simple low cross, declining to pick it up, backheeling it into his own net instead.
Clearer heads took over when Jayden Bogle, Wilf Gnonto and Dominic Calvert-Lewin arrived from the bench. The first two made an equaliser with a simple method that could have worked for any of their teammates in the first seventy minutes, if it had entered their mind. Bogle and Gnonto had no doubt that they were better players than the tired out teenagers facing them down Wednesday's left. So, to prove it, they took them on and beat them. Just ran at them with the ball and went around them! It was that easy because the gulf in abilities and experiences was that wide, and it took just ten minutes to equalise. With close control and drag backs they combined to cause panic, pushing their way into the penalty area, until a gap appeared and Gnonto found Bogle and he shot through the goalkeeper just like that. Calvert-Lewin could have won the game from there, failing with a clutch of six yard chances, but those sights of goal were proof that a thinking striker could make space, even against this compact defence. Those misses meant a penalty shoot-out, which Leeds got over and done with by missing three.
It's one brainless match, then, solved to some extent by substitutes with capacity to think. But I can pull this into a bigger picture if you like, about how the game changed when Leeds had some players on the pitch who were willing to dribble past players who were not as good as them. The scarcity of that tactic is not just a Leeds thing but a modern football thing, a 'coaches' league' thing, as the Premier League is often now called. Arsenal were doing it against Leeds at the weekend, pulling their punches against a densely packed defence and passing square, each player hoping someone else would have an idea, or someone else might get someone else to make a run. The first player using individual skill to create a chance was Viktor Gyökeres when he broke the offside trap in the second half, and he scored from it. Apart from that Arsenal were all passing all the time, structure before all, constant fetishing of shape.
Like many modern coaches Daniel Farke is an advocate of this style but it seems like he's prepared to break the rules, too, else Wilf Gnonto and Jayden Bogle wouldn't have come on and changed the game the way they did. Somewhere along the lines of the past few years football hegemony has crushed the individual, drilled players into choosing robotic safety, and churned out footballers who whatever the level and whatever the circumstances choose to play the same safe way. See Jack Grealish, Manchester City mechanical manbot. It's easy to blame Farke for blunting mavericks but that would mean believing Brenden Aaronson, the Medford Messi, could have done what Gnonto did if only he'd been allowed to. I suspect that if Aaronson had been asked to play how Gnonto played he'd have done himself a physical mischief. It's a lot to do with how footballers are taught to pass and pass to pull opponents out of position even when their opponents are a bunch of schoolkids drilled all week to do one thing and do it well: stay in position. The solution is not so much about the manager but about the players, and I think it helped in this case that as a former Sheffield United player Jayden Bogle hates the Owls and was single-minded in his determination not to let these Owlets take the piss.
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Reader: they took the piss. Or the Carabao, anyway. Which is fair because a lot of them aren't old enough to sip anything stronger (although Carabao beers are available for those of you drinking to numb this game). Overall this was a wasted opportunity for creating a better mood before the game against Newcastle on Saturday, and that's about all. It's too hard to care about the Carabao Cup, and too easy to be furious about a reserve team playing badly in it. A good show would only have lasted as long as a bad show on Saturday, and this bad show need only last as long as a proper performance in the proper football that is hopefully to come. ⭑彡
More to Read at Leedsista since last time:
Tony Currie, first time: Arsenal vs Leeds United, August 1978 ⭑ Tony Currie was a symbol of the post-Revie transformation of Leeds United from a clinical winning machine to something more relaxed, and much less effective. Nicer hair, taller floodlights, no more trophies. But what Don Revie had drilled into his players, they now drilled into Tony Currie.
How Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Leeds United just might work ⭑ An experienced Premier League striker who has scored two consecutive seasons in double figures and played and scored for England, who just needs to stay fit and recover the form he showed under Carlo Ancelotti for the next few years to become the prime of his career — and he's free?
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