Leeds United 2-2 Bournemouth: Stop making sense

Referee Michael Oliver was explaining to Sean Longstaff why the VAR was reviewing his pearler that put Leeds United 2-1 up against Bournemouth, looking for reasons to disallow the goal. Was Pascal Struijk interfering with play, standing in an offside position ahead of a goalkeeper who didn’t even bother moving to try stop Longstaff’s shot into the top corner? You didn’t have to be an expert lipreader to understand Longstaff’s response. “Fuck offfffff!”

Thankfully the VAR wasn’t as daft as Michel Kitabdjian disallowing Peter Lorimer’s volley in the 1975 European Cup final, and they could be excused for wanting a second view of Longstaff’s goal to work out what had actually happened. From the North-East corner of Elland Road, I didn’t really understand either — the ball kissing the post and rippling along the back of the net to the other side of the goal. Apart from the crowd in the Kop sparking into celebration, it was difficult to compute, at least until the replay was greeted from all four sides of the stadium with a stunned “oooooooh!”

The whole game, in fact, required a second viewing. Sometimes it’s best to write about these things with the immediate emotion and adrenaline still coursing through your veins. But sometimes first impressions can be deceiving, although even after watching the game back I’m still not entirely sure what to make of Leeds United 2-2 Bournemouth.

On the face of it, this was a classic LUFC kick in the bollocks. Not quite Gabi Gudmundsson’s “own goal of the century” at Fulham, but not far off. Bournemouth’s opener came from the softest of free-kicks given against Anton Stach on the edge of the box, a decision Bryn Law described as “a very modern foul” on LUTV commentary, which translates in old money to “not a foul”. Antoine Semenyo struck his shot hard and low into the back of the net, underneath the feet of Pascal Struijk jumping in the wall. Both Struijk and Joe Rodon turned to berate Brenden Aaronson, laying down on the floor as the wall’s draft excluder, bemoaning the fact he didn’t have longer legs.

Bournemouth’s stoppage-time equaliser was even dozier from Leeds. Substitute Ao Tanaka conceding possession and then a free-kick in his own half. Daniel Farke committing the cardinal sin of making a substitution while his team were trying to organise their defence of a set-piece. Leeds losing the initial header and leaving Eli Junior Kroupi unmarked at the back post, with the teenage forward hooking an annoyingly composed volley into the far corner to snatch a point.

But for the rest of the afternoon I thought that Leeds were excellent, and watching it back hasn’t revealed anything to dissuade me from that view. Not that it makes things any easier to compute.

Bournemouth were ominous in their stranglehold of possession and territory early on, yet Leeds fashioned three big chances that on another day could have resulted in a Dominic Calvert-Lewin hat-trick. Played through on goal by Longstaff within the opening fifteen seconds, Calvert-Lewin struck his shot too close to Bournemouth ‘keeper Djordje Petrovic, who later deserved credit for reacting quickly to Calvert-Lewin diverting Longstaff’s shot towards goal from close range. A minute later, an excellent team move that began with Karl Darlow as the ball was progressed up the pitch through defence and midfield ended with Aaronson overhead kicking a cross towards an unmarked Calvert-Lewin on the edge of the six-yard box. The striker might have had time to bring it down and take a shot. He certainly had enough time to do something better than meekly heading the ball into the ground and straight at Petrovic.

Again, I find it difficult to be too disheartened. Those early attempts aside, Calvert-Lewin was superb, the big awkward bastard of a centre-forward Leeds have yearned for since Pat Bamford paid for his golden season in 2020/21 with the next four years of his career. Once Darlow and his defence realised their attempts to play out from the back were only encouraging Bournemouth to do the thing they enjoy the most, pressing, Calvert-Lewin became the focal point that gave Leeds the platform to base the rest of their performance around. In the second half in particular it felt like he won every header, dragging his teammates up the pitch alongside him.

Longstaff only added to the welcome confusion, the player who looked like an unnecessary clone of Ilia Gruev on his full debut at Sheffield Wednesday continuing his transformation into a tough-tackling, hard-running, goalscoring central midfielder. Longstaff was everywhere against Bournemouth, including straight into Tyler Adams’ face following a sly tackle on Anton Stach after the whistle had already blown. That would have been enough to award him man of the match, never mind his spectacular finish to put Leeds 2-1 up.

Equally significantly, Longstaff was also on corner duty, hanging set-piece after set-piece into the air for Joe Rodon to attack and getting his reward as Rodon headed the equaliser through a weak attempted save from Petrovic. I needed a second viewing of that, too, because inside the ground I’d just left my seat for a piss and a pint, although if Leeds promise to score from corners every time I do so then I promise to spend £50 every other week just to stay on the concourse.

There were more signs of encouragement wherever you looked on the pitch. Despite the two goals conceded, Darlow remains far more assured than Illan Meslier can only dream of and anything we’ve seen from Lucas Perri in his nascent Leeds appearances. Struijk and Rodon have displayed the important quality of being able to absorb pressure when Leeds can’t dominate possession, forced into defending far more than they were used to in the Championship — Rodon making important blocks at the start and end of the game that were ultimately forgotten amid the chaos of an end-to-end encounter. They are flanked by full-backs with the lungs of long-distance runners, with both Jayden Bogle and Gabi Gudmundsson turning lost causes into Leeds chances, the latter in the build up to Longstaff’s stunner by tackling his way to the byline not for the first or last time that afternoon.

Above all, it was far more entertaining as a spectacle than almost anything we witnessed in the Championship, when a day out at Elland Road resembled a Thorp Arch training session on how to break down an opposition sitting eleven men behind the ball. The jeopardy of trying to get promotion came in the fear that Leeds couldn’t afford to drop a single point, whereas the irony of aiming for 17th in the Premier League this season is that every point earned feels like something new has been won. Does any of that make sense? I’m still none the wiser. But I’m starting to suspect that’s sometimes much more fun. ⬢