Match reports

What does this game mean for the rest of the season? Dunno? Do I look like Mother Shipton? Is she with us in the cave right now?

Andrea Radrizzani was hoping owning Leeds United would net him around £400m profit. But football is structured to make fans think the players are the greedy ones, ‘stealing a living’. Which is a long way of saying I still like you, Luke Ayling.

Leeds have ninety minutes of trying left but few of their games lately have gone that far. We’ve had six weeks of waiting for second halves to be over, wishing for less time even when time felt like the only hope.

Pat Bamford is far from being the only malfunctioning part of Leeds United Football Club, and in many ways good players losing the ability to do good things is the story of this season’s failure.

If there was a win for Leeds in Manchester it was the swift application of new, ugly ideas and, more importantly, ninety-five minutes of head-retention.

When Leeds lose a vital match this way there’s nothing new to say that hasn’t already been said. That, pals, is purgatory. At least, by definition, it’s temporary.

The players need to remember who they are and how they got here, because that wasn’t easy and neither is this.

The people to blame can fire someone then hire someone else then move blithely on, in the background when they choose to be, or the foreground when they choose to be, until they sell and take the profit and leave.

Somewhere out of those five garbling words came a concept like Rasmus Kristensen at one end of the pitch, trying to get the ball to Charles De Ketelaere at the other, while Jesse Marsch stood on the touchline between them enquiring after their family’s health.

It was 3-1 before Gracia could get any substitutes on, and his instructions never seemed to evolve beyond, lads, whatever you’re doing, please stop.