Sunderland 0-0 Leeds United: Let Leeds shake

Another game, another ninety minutes punishing Leeds United Football Club for being too good to be tasteful in the 1960s and 1970s. We've been paying something for our ambition since 1974, or even 1964 considering how often being brilliant went badly for us. Our 2026 version, still freshly returned to the Premier League, is showing an asynchronous glass jaw to all our old enemies.

The last three weekends have put Leeds against three histories that, combined with their modern day concerns, were more than the Peacocks could beat. And it isn't over yet. Even Bournemouth, next weekend, resent Leeds for our 1990 promotion party on their beachfront. There's no getting away from who we've enjoyed being.

Arsenal, that lot from Old Trafford, Sunderland. The Gunners were part of the hierarchy Leeds upended in the Don Revie era, and we won our two Wembley cup finals against them. I suppose Gary Sprake bopping Bobby Gould didn't go down too well, either. After promotion in 1990 we played them twelve times in 29 months, familiarity breeding contempt while we stopped them retaining their title.

Our problems with last week's visitors from over there need no further explanation. The problems with Sunderland date back to the Second Division promotion race of 1963/64, reaching their fullest extent after the 1973 FA Cup final when Second Division Sunderland paraded a misspelt 'Leed's United' coffin around Roker Park to celebrate their giantkilling. Those hostilities were renewed in Howard Wilkinson's time, too.

History isn't enough in the modern Premier League, otherwise Manchester City wouldn't have won a thing, 900 million cheated pounds or not. But history was an edge our opponents needed for the last three games. Each, in their own way, was dishevelled in the build up: Arsenal by defeat to Brighton, which manager Mikel Arteta wanted their tummies to solve; the cross-Pennine shower deepening their perennial crisis against Atletico Madrid; Sunderland with just one Premier League win to their name, leaking goals and bottom of the league. Each, in their own way, was emboldened by having Leeds next on their fixture list.

History had perhaps the slightest influence on Arsenal, who just used their bench to play as well as they should play all along. After this game in Sunderland, Daniel Farke made rueful irony of the idea that teams like Arsenal can get credit for, "Yeah, grind[ing] it out, scruffy one-nil win" because, "a player who costs £120-£140 million has a moment of magic and wins the game". 

The last two weekends were more interesting contrasts in being up for it. The last three results befalling Old Trafford were horribly predictable, with the only one in doubt happening at Elland Road. It was a given that, after putting more effort than usual into raising their standards for a War of the Roses, they would play Como and Bournemouth and lose: given that, they should have rustled themselves to win at Elland Road. The one time all season that they tried, they drew. It does not bode well for them, nor that after the pre-Leeds controversy about Lisandro Martínez speaking his mind, Bruno Fernandes has since spoken his and made everything worse. We should have beaten them, and perhaps if they weren't our most hated rivals and were instead just a bog standard very bad team, we would.

The way Sunderland were up for it this weekend had me worried more, because it was more coherent than the dumb belligerence carrying on by the ship canal. Some of the Black Cats have been speaking out recently too, risking Martínez or Fernandes style discord, but perhaps because it wasn't interesting enough to The Gary Neville Media Industrial Complex or because it was done with more style, speaking home truths only seemed to do good on Wearside.

After their last Premier League game, away to Bournemouth, returned a fourth defeat in a row, Nordi Mukiele was forthright. "If I have to be honest with you, we are not good," he told Sky Sports. "Why? I don't know. Maybe because we became arrogant, maybe. This is what I think ... Maybe we should stop to watch back what we did the last season ... We have to work and we have to be much [more] professional and be at the level every weekend. I don't like this position, I hate this position. So I will not be good, I will not sleep well."

Significantly, his was not a lone voice in Bournemouth. Goalkeeper Robin Roefs said, "I don't think anyone today can walk off the pitch and say, 'I was amazing today' ... It's about the team. We all know this." Ahead of playing Leeds, Trai Hume added, "We haven’t been at the standards we set last season, but we are all in agreement that we need to improve." Manager Regis Le Bris said he'd discussed everything with his team. "We have not liked the feeling recently, but it is a good experience and it can be the driver to get better. The challenge will raise our level." Mukiele had more to say, backing up the teammates and manager he'd called out on the weekend. "Right now, it’s not us and we are not Sunderland. We all need to look at ourselves in the mirror." He ended with, "Leeds at home will be the right moment to show everyone we are not dead."

Well, that made a change from parading a Leeds United coffin around. But that was what Sunderland were bringing to the fixture this weekend. Leeds at home. Hated historical rivals, competitors for promotion two seasons ago. There was no doubt Sunderland were going to play better than they have, just because it's us. 'Leeds at home'. 

In fact, there doesn't even need to be that needle of rivalry when it's Leeds. For too many clubs, 'Leeds at home' is enough, as is 'the chance to silence Elland Road'. And it's something that the present Leeds United team aren't equipped to deal with, simply because it's only the second season since promotion and the squad isn't ready for up-for-it opponents week in, week out. It'd be nice if we could play a nice, calm, mid-table nobody-cares no-back-story game of football once in a while. Instead we're sending Harry Wilson out there, mouldy from years of vol-au-vents on the breeze at Craven Cottage, to feel a full Wearside tornado whipping Leeds United's history up into the air and down on top of him like he's the Wicked Witch of the East.

To be fair to Wilson — and here at last I will spare a few words for a bad old game of football — he did produce one piece of skill to remind us how excellent Premier League players are, and how difficult the conditions were, when he pulled James Trafford's sixty yard clearance down from the swirling gale with one deft touch. He also showed willing to put Farke's pre-match chat about making Wilson work on pressing into action, resulting in a ball to his balls that can't have added much to his enjoyment.

Trafford also got a boot in his nethers, saving one-on-one from Brian Brobbey after Jaka Bijol's mistake, and for a long while the most interesting question of the match was about whose testicles would bear the most bruises. The answer would be easy — Luke O'Nien — if only Dominic Calvert-Lewin could have caught up with him in a secluded location and administered all the bootings he was desperate to after an afternoon in company with the Premier League's most annoying player.

Howling wind, biting rain, and Luke O'Fucking Nien: I can't even pretend I don't enjoy watching him, because he pushes the Premier League's stale boundaries with the cheek and the glimmer of personality that this glossy competition often needs. I just prefer it when he's doing it to other teams, and when he isn't so bloody lucky. Last season the referees agreed, too late, that O'Nien should have been whistled for a penalty at Elland Road. This time he gave Calvert-Lewin the ball by mistake, twice, and chaotically barged his way out of trouble, twice.

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Without any pretence of quality the game did settle into an enjoyably end-to-end form after half-time, and as a spectacle it worked if you imagined it was many fans' dreams come true, returning to the good old days of the 1960s when even summer games were suffered through wind and rain. Could we get a Billy Bremner or Johnny Giles out there to take control, though? No. We just had Sunderland fighting their shadows, and the present Leeds midfield weighed down by the responsibility, and Sean Longstaff almost winning the game with a beautiful curling shot that Roefs dived low to save.

"I think the table reflects fairly where you should be — which is really humbling," O'Nien said after the game. "But the best of it is we're not going to be there for long if we do the things we did today. It's in our hands to get back to what we did last year."

So Sunderland, at least, were made happy by raising their game against Leeds the way they haven't since beating Fulham and drawing with Brentford, four straight defeats ago. And Leeds, perhaps, could do with some of the current fashion for plain speaking to come around at Elland Road. 7th in the Premier League is fine, only one defeat and that to Arsenal is fine, five draws is fine, three clean sheets and only conceding more than one once is also fine. For Leeds' first target, of getting to 40 points sooner than last season, their 1.38 points per game so far is fine. But maybe a dose of the drama afflicting our opponents could shake Leeds up into something better, instead of treadmilling into winter being something merely decent. ⭑彡

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