Wigan Athletic 0-2 Leeds United: Something Different
Last season's game was another in United's long history — that word again — of proving that getting what we think we want is usually the precursor to a disaster: the club that spent nine seasons in Division Two after the war, won promotion, and was woken one night to its Main Stand burning down.
The fates love to toy with Leeds United. The game at home to Wigan Athletic at Easter was their game, when they span their thread and wove their tapestry and showed us how the story was going to end. We still had hope at the end of that game, but only by ignoring the inevitable.
Marcelo Bielsa wouldn't get involved in talk of last season before this weekend's visit to Wigan; "This is not the reason why we are here," he said, meaning either the pre-match press conference, or maybe meaning coming back to coach the club again.
But football doesn't give you the luxury of ignoring its past, even without history books and retrospective documentaries. Football is obsessed with its own history, especially in a centenary season; especially when the Premier League, that was once our present, feels part of the distant past. We want to go back, and that's the point; we always want to go back.
Stuart Dallas was more forthright. "I’m sure the boys will be champing at the bit to get at them on Saturday," he said. "We definitely owe them one." The ability to face down their demons will be invaluable this season; arguably, at the fourth time of facing Frank Lampard, it's what let them down last time. They've got Pontus Jansson on Wednesday, Derby County in a month.
Dallas is one player for whom starting the season in the same form he finished the last is not a hindrance; he was the best player in the home leg against Derby and came close to taking Leeds to Wembley almost by himself. He's started this season with the same influence but a different intention, of avoiding Wembley altogether, and of righting a few wrongs along the way.
To do that in these circumstances is almost weird, though, and it's hard to point anywhere other than the fates for the red card in the first half on Saturday that reduced Wigan to ten players, just as at Elland Road in April. Last season's game was another in United's long history — that word again — of proving that getting what we think we want is usually the precursor to a disaster: the club that spent nine seasons in Division Two after the war, won promotion, and was woken one night to its Main Stand burning down; that started this century top of the Premier League, and celebrated with a night out in Majestyk's nightclub. Bielsa knows this, saying once that the exciting sensation of winning lasts, "only five minutes, and after that there is that enormous and huge emptiness, and an indescribable loneliness," and the exciting sensation of watching Joe Williams sent off was followed five minutes later by the indescribable loneliness of feeling like we'd seen this all before.