Leeds United 1-2 Tottenham: High wire

Crysencio Summerville has a lot to answer for.

This month marks two years since Leeds were trailing 2-1 at Norwich in the Championship and Daniel Farke stumbled upon an idea he often returns to when he is at his most desperate. Need a goal? Throw as many forwards onto the pitch as possible (apart from Ian Poveda). Sam Byram and Glen Kamara off; Wilf Gnonto and Pat Bamford on. As for the formation? Pure chaos theory, baby.

On that afternoon at Carrow Road, it worked. Except, looking back, did it really? Leeds won that game 3-2, but those subsequent two goals had less to do with any tactical ingenuity and more to do with Summerville scoring arguably the best two goals of his Leeds career — the first bent into the far corner from the edge of the box after United passed a set-piece short, the second bent into the far corner from the edge of the box after United countered from their own penalty area and Summerville dribbled half the length of the pitch on his own.

Either way, that was all the justification Farke has needed to keep trying to repeat that magic, even if it has never worked again since. And so here we are two years on: Gabi Gudmundsson and Noah Okafor off; Joel Piroe and Lukas Nmecha on. Leeds’ left wing was sacrificed for two strikers to stand near a third striker in Dominic Calvert-Lewin, and once again the changes intended to make Leeds more threatening going forward only blunted the attack.

Jack Harrison switched from the right wing to the left to keep Pascal Struijk company on that side of the pitch. In theory, Struijk was playing on the left of a back three, but to my uneducated eye he seemed to be operating as more of a conventional left-back in a return to the bad old days under Jesse Marsch. It was hard to tell. But it most definitely meant that Jayden Bogle was left all alone on the right with nobody ahead of him to help. Before long Bogle was struggling with cramp and being replaced by the far less exciting James Justin, reducing Leeds’ threat even further.

As for the middle of the pitch — again, who knows? Piroe tried telling his teammates what they were meant to be doing, but nobody seemed interested in listening to what should have been bleeding obvious. Joe Rodon shooed Piroe away as he walked over to tell Leeds’ defence to stop pissing around passing sideways between themselves when there were two big fuckers standing up front waiting for a long ball to try win in the air. Big Lads FC + Daft Lads FC = Big Daft Lads FC, and I’m fairly certain that wasn’t what Leeds United were aiming for this summer.

The problem for Farke is that Leeds didn’t get what they were aiming for this summer so, with no obvious alternatives, perhaps his tactics of ‘fuck around and find out’ could be excused this time. When Nmecha arrived on a free transfer, Leeds talked up ‘his ability to play in the centre of the attack or also on the wing’, and part of me wonders if Farke would’ve been better off sticking to his original plan by simply telling Nmecha to play out wide even if I know deep down it probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference. Leeds were already getting worse as the game got closer to full-time, and it was hard to not think that the second half had gone exactly as Thomas Frank’s Tottenham had wanted.

It needn’t have been that way. For most of the game, Leeds went punch for punch with Spurs, landing more jabs only to get unexpectedly caught by two painful uppercuts that ultimately decided the bout.

Anton Stach hit a sumptuous volley wide from a Sean Longstaff corner. Another Longstaff set-piece led to Rodon heading against the post when he needed to score. With United gaining the ascendency and the ball at Karl Darlow’s feet, Gabi Gudmundsson embraced his inner-Firpo and made a run high up the pitch, eager to attack. Inevitably, Spurs won the ball and surged into the space Gudmundsson had vacated, Mathys Tel’s shot deflecting off Pascal Struijk and looping over Darlow’s paw at the near post.

To their credit, Leeds didn’t let the setback dissuade them, only to let themselves down with their finishing. The sight of Calvert-Lewin and Brenden Aaronson warming up by scuffing finishes into the ground or over the bar hadn’t given me much confidence, so it wasn’t too much of a surprise when Calvert-Lewin followed his hat-trick of misses against Bournemouth with an ugly swipe that went high and wide after being gifted an opportunity in front of Spurs’ goal by their defence’s dozy passing out from the back, before hitting goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario’s feet when he should’ve hit the bottom corner at the start of the second half.

I was willing to forgive Calvert-Lewin those misses against Bournemouth because he was so dominant in the rest of his performance. He couldn’t get as much change out of Spurs’ meaty centre-backs Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven, yet Leeds’ best moments still came when they played to their striker’s strengths. Noah Okafor tapped in an equaliser after Jayden Bogle crossed into Calvert-Lewin’s feet and he bounced the ball to Aaronson, whose shot was palmed to Okafor. And Piroe almost grabbed a late leveller from a Calvert-Lewin knockdown — the one time Leeds made sense of the tactical changes towards the end of the game — only for Vicario to save from Piroe’s volley.

Instead, the game was decided by Spurs’ £55m winger Mohammed Kudus — a pain in the arse all game — outmuscling Gudmundsson and wrong footing Darlow courtesy of another deflection off Struijk.

As a result, perhaps Farke’s changes were a symptom rather than the cause of another date in which Leeds were spurned by Lady Luck. It had already been a theme of Farke’s pre-match press conference:

“We have not [won] one point lucky, but we have also, I would say, lost three points very, very unlucky. So we could be easily even on ten or eleven points if I’m honest. And then we would not just be talk of the town, but also talk of the country.”

While there is a truth to what Farke was saying, the danger is that too much of such rhetoric can leave you sounding like Jesse Marsch crying into his underlying metrics, stressed out beyond belief, frazzled by a lack of clarity. But it’s indicative of the high wire act Leeds will be playing in each of their 38 Premier League games this season.

United have veered from the defensive solidity of the opening weeks in which they looked like they might never score a goal, to creating plenty of opportunities only to rue weak concessions and a lack of quality in finishing those chances. Much like the 2-2 draw against Bournemouth, it was another absorbing contest in which there was lots to admire but too much to ultimately frustrate. One moment Leeds’ midfield were snapping into tackles and moving the ball nicely. The next moment they were giving it away cheaply and getting overrun on the break. There are always two teams on the pitch, though, and the difference was that Tottenham’s was full of fast, skilful, expensive players who had the nous to punish Leeds, however fortunately, in the crucial moments. The backdrop of a referee who couldn’t make his mind up what set of rules he was blowing his whistle to only added to the frustration that Leeds got suckered into.

But staying balanced, on the pitch, in the dugout and in the boardroom is the best way forward for Leeds this season. Two encouraging performances and one point against two teams sitting in the top four remains something to build on, no matter how dispiriting the final results have been. After all, it doesn’t matter how much you’ve practised or how many times you’ve done it before. Every step you take while walking a tightrope will always make your arse twitch. ⬢