Arsenal 5-0 Leeds United: Back to school

Frantic defending from corners. Midfielders losing the ball and being punished within two passes. Five goals conceded in the capital. Tell you what, lads, West Ham didn’t half embarrass themselves in the Premier League this weekend.

In many ways, West Ham are what Leeds United are aiming to become. Established in the Premier League, their pockets stuffed full of over a decade’s worth of Premier League revenue, aided by the extra income of playing in a bigger stadium. Leeds even sounded out Graham Potter before appointing Daniel Farke. Only seven clubs in the league have a higher transfer net spend than West Ham over the last five years; by comparison, only three have a lower transfer net spend than Leeds over the same period.

Yet West Ham are laughable because they keep making the same mistakes. Botched managerial appointments and fortunes spent on players the next coach wants to get rid of. The one time a manager got a grip of the club and delivered their first ‘major’ trophy since 1980, their fans got bored of David Moyes and his top-half finishes and things have gone from bad to worse ever since. Having been part of ‘The Best League In The World™’ for the last thirteen years, what’s their excuse?

Leeds, on the other hand, are back at the start of their learning curve in the Premier League. Losing 5-0 is never a good look, even if it happens in — judging by Arsenal’s last three league placings — the second toughest game of the season, against a side that last season stuck five past financial dopers Man City, FA Cup winners Crystal Palace and, you guessed it, West Ham.

The good news is the defeat at Arsenal doesn’t need to lead to the type of existential crisis engulfing so many other clubs in the division. The challenge is whether Leeds and Farke can learn quickly enough from such a chastening lesson.

Should Farke have already known some of the answers? Maybe, but I’m willing to give him this week to brush up on a few difficult subjects. Leeds gave Everton hell in their opening game of the season and starting the likes of Joel Piroe, Pascal Struijk and Ilia Gruev was not just a reward for some solid work at Elland Road last Monday but their graft in winning 190 points over the two previous seasons. I wanted to see how those players coped against some of the best the Premier League has to offer, even if I didn’t like what we learned at the Emirates.

Either way, I’m not sure the alternatives would have made any difference to the result anyway. Lukas Nmecha would, in theory, have given Leeds more of a physical presence up front and more encouragement not to piss about from goal-kicks, but in the half an hour he got off the bench he still lost the ball more than Piroe did in an hour. Arsenal are simply loads better than Leeds right now, and whether Leeds stay up or not will be decided by their ability to impose themselves on the rest of the also-rans like Everton.

That’s not teaching us anything new though, and losing 5-0 should still sting, particularly when so many of those five goals were self-inflicted. Joe Rodon needed to wake up a second earlier when losing Jurrien Timber for Arsenal’s opener from a corner. Similarly, Gruev did the hard work of winning the ball back only to take a second too long on the ball when he had a simple pass to one of two players to his right, allowing Arsenal to steal it back and Bukayo Saka the space to rifle in a second minutes before half-time.

Had Farke made changes at half-time we might have learned something different after the break, although again Nmecha wouldn’t have made much difference as Struijk and Rodon bizarrely ducked out of the same header straight from the restart followed by Ao Tanaka misplacing a simple pass out for a throw-in and, two minutes later, Victor Gyokeres dribbling through some paper thin defending from Struijk and Jayden Bogle to be gifted his first goal for Arsenal. As for the hosts’ fourth, and Timber’s second from a corner, I have no idea what happened but I know it wasn’t good. Gyokeres scoring the fifth in stoppage time after an actual child had bought a penalty out of Anton Stach was cruel, not to mention really bloody annoying.

The only glimpses of anything positive from Leeds were a meaty Struijk header tipped over the bar and a couple of brief forays down the right wing from Dan James that came as a result of the few times Leeds could string some passes together quickly enough from defence to midfield to attack. As for the rest, Lucas Perri could really do with making a few saves this week after conceding from all five of the shots on target he faced, while United’s build-up play from the back was both too naive and too slow, meaning the midfield could never get high enough up the pitch to get close to the forwards. The latter explains why Farke spoke in the week of wanting an attacker that operates more like a number 10 in finding pockets of space, although if Piroe is to be this season’s Mateo Joseph in starting the season up front only to be replaced after a month then that might become his role off the bench, when he has produced some of his best work in a Leeds shirt.

Ultimately, this is a game Leeds need to move on from quickly. Thankfully, this week provides the perfect opportunity to do so. A League Cup tie at Sheffield Wednesday is likely to feature first starts for Nmecha, Jaka Bijol and Sean Longstaff — plus maybe even Noah Okafor, Sebastiaan Bornauw and a first sighting of Dominic Calvert-Lewin. Should they perform well enough then the team for Saturday’s visit of Newcastle could be very different. At which point it will be over to the players and manager to prove they can learn fast enough to not have to sit with the rest of the division’s dullards. ⬢

(Photograph by David Klein/Sportimage, via Alamy)