Leeds United 4-1 Crystal Palace: Can you handle it?
The Peacocks' stubborn refusal to meander means making their own fun. Elland Road is a palace of nerves, as long as you can hold them.
The Peacocks' stubborn refusal to meander means making their own fun. Elland Road is a palace of nerves, as long as you can hold them.
Tanaka's stoppage time equaliser against Liverpool rewrote the match into a memory of ninety minutes of relentless glory. Calvert-Lewin's equaliser here turned the first hour of stern brutishness into a memory of spurned initiatives, chances to win not taken.
Celebrating the draws like wins is the way you get, one day, to celebrate the wins like wins. And to celebrate the draws, you have to win them. If Leeds United's players understand that, and it looks like they do, they have a great chance of staying up this season.
Elland Road is still capable of neutralising the future. The game Howard Wilkinson grew up in still has to be played, first and foremost: players have to earn the right to play.
Last Thursday, after a long question about whether he and the board were 'still on the same page', Farke simply answered, 'yes'. Even after getting more right at the weekend than anyone predicted, he might have to hope nobody asks him again this week.
Football's trying very hard to trade excitement away for the predictable routine of a bizarrely furious careers fair but I'm still clinging, to Struijk heading and Martinez saving, for one random thrill.
The next month at Leeds pits the strength of strategy against the might of the fixture list. When the aim is 16th and the team is 16th, does a club back itself, or not?
Farke said, "We don’t have to over-analyse the game," and I hope he was lying ahead of a week spent over-analysing, over-thinking and overall tearing up plans, finding a solution for a better Leeds team.
This game almost produced one of the goals of the decade. It's just over twelve years since the last one, and just about the only chance I'll get to compare Brenden Aaronson, favourably, to Rudy Austin.
Not taking three points from this relegation rival means those three points will have to be taken from better teams later. So Leeds need to become an even better team, soon, if they can.