Supporting a really good football team is what every fan dreams of, but I can’t help wondering whether we’d all be enjoying this season far more if we weren’t being told week after week that Leeds United are by far the best side in the Championship. According to the bookies, Leeds are still odds on favourites to win the league. After every victory, even the most sour-faced opposition managers — hello, Mr Wilder!👋 — describe how Leeds are “a different animal” in this division. Even our chief executive Angus Kinnear was crowing in the summer about Leeds possessing “one of the highest value squads” alongside “probably the first or second highest wage bill” in the history of the competition, as if signing Brenden Aaronson for at least twice as much as he’s worth (as Kinnear also admitted) is something to boast about.

Losing 1-0 away at Blackburn and sitting third in the table at the start of December, three points off first place, doesn’t mean that all the above isn’t true. Leeds lost nine times when winning the title (by ten points) in 2019/20, Leicester eleven last season. Having lost three of our opening eighteen fixtures, Daniel Farke’s Leeds are on course to lose fewer games than either of those campaigns this season. But the expectation of this Leeds squad compared to the reality of the results and performances means every failure to take all three points feels far more fraught than it ought to.

Sure, Leeds are in a good position and fans would at least make their own lives more enjoyable by keeping their heads — I’m afraid to say we will lose more games this season — but the players and the manager also need to earn that faith by living up to their reputations more consistently and convincingly. It’s true that Leeds of 19/20 and Leicester of 23/24 lost plenty of games, but they also won large swathes of matches, too. At this stage of our last title-winning season, Leeds were in the middle of winning seven games in a row. Last season, Leicester had already won thirteen of their opening fourteen league fixtures, and after back-to-back defeats at the start of November went on to win eight of their next ten. So far this term, Leeds’ best run of results has been the three consecutive wins that preceded defeat at Ewood Park.

The away form is to blame for that lack of momentum. While Leeds have won six games on the bounce at Elland Road, they’ve won just twice away from home in that time. But if that’s the problem, I’m still none the wiser about the solution. It doesn’t matter where Leeds are playing in the Championship, the opposition almost always play in the same way, and the games almost always follow the same pattern — Leeds have more possession and more shots — yet while they generally win by a couple of goals at home, there’s something about sitting on a coach for an hour or so that seems to spook them. “It should have been like a home game for us today, we had 7,000 travelling fans,” Joe Rodon told LUTV after Todd Cantwell’s penalty settled the game in Blackburn. But it shouldn’t matter that it wasn’t.

Instead, it was a repeat of all the usual failings of this team — namely a lack of incisiveness and killer instinct in front of goal. I’m going to write about Brenden Aaronson later in the week if only to stop the screaming in my head whenever I have to watch him play, so I might as well start early. Aaronson keeps talking about wanting to change people’s perceptions of him as a footballer, telling Goal last month:

“I’m not just a runner — my technical ability on the ball, I don’t think I get a ton of credit for it, but whenever I’m playing consistent minutes, I always get going with assists.”

If Aaronson wants to be known for his technique and creative flair, maybe he’d be better off shutting up and creating some goals. As things stand, he has one assist all season, way back in the win at Cardiff in September. In a week when he admitted he’s hoping to pass his driving theory test at the third time of asking, the boy who wants to be the brains of Leeds’ attack couldn’t even decide what to wear, starting the game in a long-sleeved shirt and gloves, before ditching the gloves midway through the first half, and coming out after the break having switched to a short sleeves. Daniel Farke could have at least helped him out with a costume change by making Aaronson sit on the bench in a puffer jacket much earlier than his usual seventy-minute substitutions.

To be fair to Aaronson, he was only one member of an entire attack that had a match to forget. Dan James was unusually anonymous. Joel Piroe was typically ponderous, painfully slow in reacting to a chance gifted to him in front of goal by Blackburn’s own defence. Wilf Gnonto seemed the most likely Leeds player to make something happen, but wasted United’s best chance of the game by shooting straight into ‘keeper Aynsley Pears’ chest when he had either corner of the goal to aim at. Earlier in the season, Gnonto proved he had the ability to match his old bezzie Crysencio Summerville’s twenty-goal campaign at this division, but for all his talent he can be guilty of not making the most of it. And with Pascal Struijk missing a similarly gilt-edged chance, heading straight at Pears from inside the six-yard box, Leeds were always going to be susceptible to being undone by a goal as gormless as Cantwell’s penalty — and were lucky Blackburn were as careless finishing some of their own chances in front of goal.

Shortly after Aaronson was replaced by Largie Ramazani, the away end began chanting, ‘Attack! Attack! Attack!’, followed immediately by Ramazani’s first touch bouncing away from him and back to Blackburn. He was joined on the pitch by a surprise appearance from Pat Bamford, who helped the hosts see the game out by being offside a couple of times (including in the build-up to a Ramazani ‘equaliser’ that was ruled out), giving away soft fouls, and spending ten minutes receiving treatment after getting in the way of Struijk trying to head the ball. The afternoon finished with Farke trying to moan at referee Lewis Smith, only to end up in an argument with Blackburn captain Lewis Travis, who, much like Cantwell, is a chippy little nobody Leeds really shouldn’t be losing to.

So much blood-letting still leaves me uneasy when we have ended our previous two games singing about being top of the league, but this team would make it much easier to believe in them if they spent more than fleeting moments on top of that perch. We all know about our history in the play-offs, and to paraphrase Billy Bremner, we’ve all followed Leeds in the Championship for long enough to know you get nowt for being third. ⬢

(Photograph by Martin Rickett, via Alamy)