Give us something

It wasn’t another brainless red card or the painful ease with which Chelsea scored their three goals on Wednesday night that reminded me of the end of Thomas Christiansen’s reign as manager. It was the sight of Kalvin Phillips’ charging around the pitch at Elland Road again.

Watching Phillips pressurising Chelsea’s defenders as the furthest Leeds player forward, trying to compensate for some of his teammates’ lack of energy, took me back to January 20th, 2018. Leeds lost that day to another team from London we don’t like in far more tortuous circumstances, but Millwall’s 4-3 win didn’t leave me wanting Christiansen to be sacked. It left me wanting more.

The blueprint was much the same as the loss to Chelsea: falling behind early, some pantomime villainy in the north-east corner, a self-sabotaging red card, and a mountain to climb by half-time. The day began with BBC Radio Leeds broadcasting an interview with Liam Cooper defending his side’s discipline. “We’re not a horrible group,” he said. It ended with Cooper facing a four-match ban after collecting his second red card of the season, and Leeds’ third in three games. Leeds’ discipline was so inexplicable Christiansen took comfort in the fact his captain was sent off for hitting an opposition player with a clumsy tackle rather than a headbutt or some phlegm.

Leeds’ players were spared some of the crowd’s fury by Steve Morison provoking the kind of loathing Mason Mount can only dream of. Prior to the game, Morison spoke to the South London News about the “decent reception” he had received from Leeds fans during the reverse fixture at The Den earlier in the season. “I’ve got no hard feelings towards the club and I hope they’ve got none towards me — even though I didn’t fulfil what I should’ve done there,” he said. But after Aiden O’Brien put Millwall in front and ran off celebrating towards the West Stand, Morison remained posturing in the north-east corner, waiting to be joined by teammates and pointing to the name on the back of his shirt.

“I was getting plenty of stick and they never like it when it’s turned on its head, do they?” Morison asked afterwards, except the crowd hadn’t been giving him “plenty of stick” at all. So what point was he trying to prove, and why had he seemingly asked his teammates to join him? Morison answered that one himself: “I was crap when I played here.” As Moxcowhite wrote in his match report, ‘only he knows why he now wears that crapness like a badge of honour.’

The losing of heads wasn’t contained to the pitch. Christiansen argued Cooper’s tackle only merited a yellow card, but referee David Coote was convinced to send him off after being harangued by Millwall players screaming in his face, led by Morison, and their coaching staff running to the sideline to yell at him some more. Leeds’ coaches had to be separated from Neil Harris and co by pitchside security, which got Christiansen’s two assistants sent to the stands. That meant by the time Leeds could sort the admin to bring Matthew Pennington on to fill the gap left by Cooper at centre-half, Millwall had already made it 2-0.

I’d gone to queue at the bar after Cooper was sent off and missed Lee Gregory scoring the second. It was a regular occurrence back then. Two weeks later, in what did turn out to be Christiansen’s last game, I missed Gaetano Berardi getting sent off and Cardiff scoring twice. I’ve learned my lesson and have rarely left my seat before half-time since.

It was easy to give up on Leeds back then, but the second half was a reminder that these are the moments when we’re most likely to be surprised. Christiansen said he had some harsh words with the players after such an abysmal first 45 minutes, but maybe Jesse Marsch should pay more attention to what Harris told his Millwall players:

“Boys, don’t step off. If we’d have come in at 6-0, it would have been no disgrace. But it’s all about character. Elland Road, 35,000 — any momentum Leeds get, they’re going to build off. Give them nothing.”

The flipside of that is if Leeds give Elland Road something, wild things can happen. Within a minute of the restart, Pierre-Michel Lasogga met Kemar Roofe’s cutback with a shotgun blast of an instep (I missed that too, still in the bar). As Harris said, “They had a right go. We completely lost our composure.”

Nine minutes later, Millwall ‘keeper Jordan Archer fumbled a cross with Lasogga, Roofe, and Gjanni Alioski standing over him, swinging their boots until Roofe eventually forced the ball over the line. We’d lost patience with Lasogga for his sheer ineptitude in the loss at Newport in the FA Cup a fortnight earlier. But then he was getting the ball on the edge of Millwall’s penalty area and providing one of Elland Road’s purest moments, soundtracked by a phrase that will continuing reverberating around the ground no matter how many more hospitality seats they squeeze in: “Lasogga, get in the box you fat cunt!”

There’s yer tifo, Radz.

Boom!!! #lufc 3-2 pic.twitter.com/aAhitQH0s6

— Phil (@leedsunited86) January 20, 2018

“Before the game everyone said, ‘We need a striker,’” said Christiansen. “There, you have a striker.”

This being a crash course in Leeds United, we know how it ended. Lasogga and Roofe had to be substituted, exhausted, replaced by Stuart Dallas and Conor Shaughnessy, while Pablo Hernandez played as a lone striker. Pennington was playing as a hybrid wing-back, like a foreshadowing of Pascal Struijk’s future, and Laurens De Bock made his debut, adding his name to the psychodrama of United left-backs to later include Junior Firpo.

In the middle of it all, Kalvin Phillips desperately tried to cover every blade of grass. All he got as a reward was a booking, his tenth of the season. He looked to the sky in frustration, knowing he was joining Samu Saiz, Eunan O’Kane and Liam Cooper on the list of suspensions. One fan tweeted in reply to Phil Hay: “Hope the useless fucker never sets foot on Elland Road again.”

Leeds were holding on to an unlikely win, that would have put them level on points with Sheffield United in 6th place, until the 87th minute. Former academy graduate Tom Elliott, who played four times for our first team without a goal, was the inevitable scorer of the equaliser. Jed Wallace’s winner deflected past Felix Wiedwald in the 92nd.

‘Got to be one of the most bewildering games this ground has ever seen,’ Phil Hay tweeted, adding: ‘In 10 years time that will look like another Championship result but I don’t think I’ve ever covered a game quite like that.’

If 2021/22 has taught me anything, it’s that what I love most about Leeds United is its attitude of defiance. We lose all the time, and have done for over a century, but we lose better than anyone. Seriously, have you ever felt more alive than those two goals in 24 seconds against Scum? Maybe Christiansen was always doomed because he didn’t recognise those same qualities in his side. “I would rather play like shit and win,” he said. “It’s all very nice — but no points.” Two weeks later they played like shit against Cardiff and lost, 4-1, and he was sacked.

It sounds ridiculous, I know, but football is ridiculous. I’ve rarely felt as much pride in Leeds than leaving Elland Road after that loss to Millwall, even though I also felt like Pablo:

Monday. #LUFC pic.twitter.com/GxYGLEecix

— The Square Ball (@TheSquareBall) January 22, 2018

Sure Leeds lost, sure they had a man sent off, sure they conceded rubbish goals to rubbish footballers, but they weren’t frightened, keeping five defenders at the back, hoping to snatch a goal by pure chance. If this season is to end in relegation, all I ask is for a moment like Lasogga’s defiance against Millwall. All I want is a moment that starts with the words, “Rodrigo, get in the box you lazy c…”