Leeds United 1-2 Aston Villa: Creeping death

Why is it so difficult to go for a piss in the East Stand? There are no doubt more pressing issues being discussed in the offices of Elland Road and the training pitches at Thorp Arch right now, but that question goes a long way to explaining where Leeds United are at as a club right now.

It’s been a long, long time since an afternoon at Elland Road has felt so dispiriting. The football on the pitch was only a small part of why I felt that way. I’ve seen Leeds play far, far worse on countless occasions. But as I stood on the steps of the East Lower for ten minutes waiting for the crowd to disperse so I could leave, then queued among the thousands of people leaving the biggest stand in the stadium squeezing through a single door to go to the toilet, I was struck by how much has happened at Leeds over the last decade, and how little has changed.

Around the last time concerns were raised about the standard of facilities at Elland Road, then-chief executive Angus Kinnear told a supporters’ group that fans were unfair to ask for a refurb of the toilets while also asking the club to Sign A Fucking Left-Back. It was a laughable argument, not least because the club never signed a fucking left-back and got relegated. And so here we are, almost three years, one takeover, one promotion and a completely new squad later, watching a substandard team play for a substandard manager in a substandard stadium in the hands of a substandard ownership. A club so determined to escape the terror of its recent past and embrace a bright new future yet continuing to make the same mistakes in the present. Perhaps they’ve never got round to adding another door to the pissers because they were saving the money for another attacker they forgot to sign. Plus ça change.

There was, however, a game of football played at Elland Road on Sunday afternoon, another game ticked off towards the inevitable sacking of Daniel Farke. Leeds were actually better than they have been in recent weeks, their aggression and sharpness in the tackle rewarded with an early goal as Sean Longstaff’s free-kick to the back post was diverted into the sky by Gabi Gudmundsson, followed by Anton Stach beating a flapping Emi Martinez in the air and a lengthy VAR check after the ball bounced over the line off Lukas Nmecha.

In truth, Leeds never looked like doubling their lead before half-time, but continued giving as good as they got with Ao Tanaka keeping the engine ticking having replaced Stach, who was subbed off with a head injury fifteen minutes after his initial collision with Martinez in another example of football’s worrying attitude towards concussion. Joe Rodon marshalled the defence excellently, reunited with Pascal Struijk in place of the dropped Jaka Bijol. The midfield was combative and gave John McGinn plenty to moan about it. The attack? Well, that was the same old problem.

The issue with such a toothless attack is that Leeds are unable to put their foot on the throat of opposition sides, either in scoreboard pressure or at least a weight of chances that could induce panic. Nor can they retain possession in meaningful areas of the pitch. Ultimately, that makes it comfortable for the opposition, even if they’re trailing 1-0. At half-time, Unai Emery made two changes, and two minutes later Villa were level. Noah Okafor switched off momentarily and left Gudmundsson to deal with both Matty Cash and Donyell Malen, resulting in Leeds conceding the same goal they have conceded on a weekly basis since returning to the Premier League. Malen crossed low, and this time Morgan Rogers was the midfield runner to find space in the box and make it 1-1 with a flick past Lucas Perri.

From that moment on the second half felt like the creeping death that as things stand feels like the direction the rest of the season is heading. Eventually Gudmundsson slipped. Struijk conceded a free-kick on the edge of the box. As he had done when facing an attempt from Emi Buendia that was blazed over in the first half, Perri crouched behind the wall, making himself smaller between the posts. Rogers cleared the wall, and this time the shot was on target. Perri only took a step backwards behind his goalline, Meslieresque, as the ball went past him and nestled into the middle of the net. I’ve seen some defence of Perri online, positing theories about the wall placement, Rodon’s jump (or lack thereof) in the wall and the skill of Rogers to get the ball up and down so quickly. But I often think we’re guilty of overcomplicating football, and if a free-kick goes into the middle of the net, I don’t think it’s outrageous to suggest the goalkeeper should at least try to stop it.

I’m not really sure what happened after that. I still had my head in my hands when Dan James immediately broke down the right and Dominic Calvert-Lewin bundled in an ‘equaliser’, but it happened so quickly and appeared so easy it was no surprise when it was ruled out by VAR. I presumed Calvert-Lewin was offside. Instead, it had gone in off his hand. Leeds kept pressing, though, even if Martinez’s decent save from Struijk’s header from a free-kick felt inevitable. We were never going to score another.

The rest of the day was spent ruminating on the usual. Why was Brenden Aaronson in the starting XI? Why did Farke wait so painfully long to make random changes as usual, to the point where a fan was arrested for getting on the pitch to remonstrate with Leeds’ manager, who pretended he hadn’t seen him afterwards? Even Aaronson expected to be subbed off sooner, running to the touchline when he saw the number 11 held aloft by the fourth official even though it was Villa making a change. Moments earlier, he had given the ball away with his usual dithering on a counter attack — I don’t need to describe it in any more detail, you’ve seen it countless times before — which was greeted with chants for Dan James and Wilf Gnonto.

Despite admitting Aaronson, “can be annoying even for me — sometimes he’s not clear enough and can be a bit hectic,” Farke tried his best to defend his player, pointing to how much distance he has covered in his last three appearances. Yet again, none of this stands up to scrutiny. Aaronson himself keeps going away on international duty and speaking about how he feels his creativity and technical ability — whatever that may be — is overlooked in favour of his workrate. Meanwhile, it is a year ago this month that Farke advised Aaronson how to improve as a footballer after Leeds were beaten at Millwall: “He runs too much — he has to channel it. If he calms his game down in some areas and moments, he will be in more concentrated positions to play the final pass or finish. If you play football with always pulse 200 [bpm] it’s hard to be cool in the head.”

Fast forward a year of Farke asking the board to sign a new number 10, of Farke changing his system to play without a number 10, of Farke starting this season with Aaronson not in his first-choice XI, and Aaronson is suddenly undroppable despite showing no evidence of developing as a footballer in the way Farke wanted him to. Rather than bemoan the impact groans from the crowd might have on Aaronson’s mental health, Farke would be better off explaining why the standards to which he is judging Aaronson have changed, and why he keeps putting him out there and subjecting him to those groans until Aaronson tries running off the pitch in sheer relief — hoping someone, anyone, even Aston Villa, are going to sub him off.

Farke is unlikely to be the one getting asked these questions for much longer. Although as I left Elland Road, I was mainly asking how we’ve ended up signing a goalkeeper who’s no better than our second-choice ‘keeper from the Championship, Karl Darlow, alongside two centre-halves deemed no better than Pascal Struijk, to complement attacking reinforcements we have long since known weren’t good enough either in quantity or quality? These are questions that should be asked of someone higher up than whoever is in the dugout. And the most frightening thing of all is we’re relying on the same people to come up with some better solutions. ⬢