West Ham United 3-0 Leeds United: Ways of being
Leeds got so bored of waiting for the team that was supposedly fighting for its life to actually do anything that they submitted to the sunshine, and the heat, and the fact the season was going to be all over in twenty minutes anyway.
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The final day's only success, if we can even call it that, was to make me aware again, after a long absence from my thoughts, about Everton. Everton! Remember them? Remember Toffees? Remember Big Nev?
The Premier League was relying on David Moyes and the boys — Alessandro Pistone, Mark Pembridge, Steven Pienaar, all of them — to give us all one great big laugh, or at least a frisson of risk, by beating Tottenham. As it turned out, Leeds United played a part that wasn't even necessary: we definitely didn't have to lose 3-0 to West Ham United, or lose to them at all, or anything. All anyone needed, to make the identity of this season's last relegatee at least temporarily mysterious, was for Everton to please merely just score at White Hart Lane.
Should have known better! It's so long since Everton came to Elland Road, for the first match of the season, it feels like a lifetime. The trip to their new place was at the end of January, when everyone was too relieved by the end of a new year's first month to notice much about a 1-1 draw on Merseyside. The rest of the time? I couldn't tell you what Everton have been up to, if it's anything at all. Were they still going? Did they have any matches? Did they play some games? Could they have saved some of whatever happened in those to make Tottenham at least have to sweat a bit?
Tottenham's survival did look quite sweaty from our distance, João Palhinha scoring just before half-time and celebrating like a tank of testosterone combusting in a gym. What I saw of their game endorsed my inkling that, rather than sort out all the toxic personalities in their dressing room, Roberto De Zerbi has indulged them, as he did with Mason Greenwood at Marseille, by choosing to take them as he finds them and not think too hard about what they're really like. They've had a real men's men's end to the season, all throbbing veins and tantrums on the floor. What's worse is it's worked. Everton, startled to come up against a team that actually wanted something, reverted to what seems to be their own type: lots of crosses, headed tamely over the bar.
Which left our beloved Super Leeds in limbo. And playing dreadful football. After such a good season I am willing to absolve them of blame on this occasion, and blame Everton, because I have no doubt that had the Toffees taken the lead and given the Hammers some purpose, the Peacocks would have found purpose of their own in stopping them. But West Ham were also dreadful in the first half, lulling Leeds into attacking them just because their goal was there, but not really knowing why, or whether this was their role to play.
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Once everyone came back from half-time knowing Tottenham had the lead, though, there was really no point to anything at the London Stadium anymore. West Ham could attack and score, three times in the end, but it wasn't going to matter so there wasn't much point in Leeds putting up much resistance. Besides, it took them so long — Valentín Castellanos finally broke the deadlock in the 67th minute — I think Leeds got so bored of waiting for the team that was supposedly fighting for its life to actually do anything that they submitted to the sunshine, and the heat, and the fact the season was going to be all over in twenty minutes or so anyway. Facundo Buonanotte came on and did a bit of something but that just made him look even more out of place than he has all season.
This is an unusual feeling for Leeds United Football Club, which might be why it felt so disappointing. We had plenty of redundant final days in the Championship, in the mid-2010s, but they each arrived with slightly different flavours of anger and apathy to animate them. Either side of those were seasons with lots on the line, either going up from the Championship or going down into it or under it, so we have to go back to the 1990s to remember finishing in a decent position in the Premier League in a decent way and feeling basically fine about it.
For sheer frolics you couldn't beat the pitch invasion at the end of a 3-3 draw at Coventry in 1992/93, with our champions' safety long confirmed, and Mark Beeney, Carl Shutt, Dylan Kerr and Ray Wallace all getting a trot out and Ray's twin Rod scoring a hat-trick. A year later was a fun romp away at relegated Swindon, beating them 5-0. The last day a year later had Brian Deane's storming goal at Tottenham getting us into Europe, but there's nothing to say about a 0-0 at Coventry to end 1995/96, except that Leeds had lost seven since losing the League Cup final and things were not okay. A 1-1 draw a year later relegated Middlesbrough, which was a lot of fun, but a 1-1 draw at home to Wimbledon in 1997/98, when we were 5th, is bringing nothing back to me at all. I only know about the 2-2 draw at Coventry, the season after that, because recently I looked it up to see David Hopkin's goal.
Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman
It's all long ago, so it's hard remembering how to respond to a dull-o day after so long, and when the Premier League works so hard to prevent dull days the only way it knows how, with money. The Everton score must have been communicated so West Ham would know, but I wonder if anyone was keeping Leeds' players abreast of Newcastle's defeat to Fulham and how it meant, by winning, Super Leeds could finish super-12th. The people most bothered by that will be 49ers Enterprises, as jumping two places could have added roughly £7m to the club's prize money, but now they not only have to write that off but pay for the laptops being thrown through glass back-office walls back in San Francisco, too. At least we can take solace that our players, who were also on bonuses for their final league position, are not motivated by money: the no-dickheads policy coming back to bite the owners.
The tinge of underwhelm wasn't helped when, while we were still basking in a better than expected season, Sky Sports started touring the grounds where European football had been the prize. I was very happy with Leeds United's 14th place until I was being confronted with Brighton qualifying for the Conference League, Bournemouth for the Europa League, and then Sunderland too. Bloody Sunderland.
Inevitably the Mackems' 7th place rewards have prompted smugness in Sunderland about the success of their policies and their planning, but I'm still sure that their lesson is about luck: a 122nd minute goal in their play-off semi-final, a 95th minute winner in the final, even going back to the bizarre bounce that bamboozled Illan Meslier and won them an undeserved point along the way. Sunderland were able to respond so well, within the Profit & Sustainability Rules, precisely because they hadn't been planning for promotion, so hadn't maxed out their allowances, so there was nothing to stop them spending big and carrying on up. The one and only policy vindicated by this was Massimo Cellino's, who said while Leeds owner that he was going to stop planning for promotion, as that would never work, and only wish for it instead.
Leeds United, meanwhile, are likely to stick to 49ers Enterprises policy of carefully planned and often frustrating incremental progress. To be fair it has made finishing 14th rather than 12th feel like a letdown, when we could quite easily have been making like West Ham and finishing 18th. How big the next increment of progress should be is now the issue, for Daniel Farke and the board, and how much frustration the manager, and the fans, will be prepared to tolerate next season. 49ers Enterprises may be hoping we don't pay too much attention to Sunderland, right now, and start expecting to follow them straight away. But having paid attention to Everton this weekend, albeit briefly, we have to avoid becoming them, too. Emulating West Ham is obviously out of the question. Which leaves only one option, of being Leeds United, but that's never as easy as it sounds. ⭑彡
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Daniel Farke has made some very reasonable, fan-friendly requests and pegged them to 49ers Enterprises' ambition. Any failure to agree now will be interpreted as the owners' ambition falling short of the manager's — and the fans'.
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