Have Leeds ever been so emphatically Leeds on the opening day of a season? Tearing into Stoke in the first game under Marcelo Bielsa felt too good to be true. Losing 5-1 to Scum at Old Trafford felt shit. Walking out of Elland Road on Saturday, I was glad we were back and the season was underway, if only for a distraction from the tedious transfer clickbait that ruins everyone’s summer, but I couldn’t work out if I’d actually enjoyed it or not. All I knew was that it was pure, unfiltered Leeds U-fucking-nited.

In hindsight, there was a lot to enjoy. Sheer madness, mainly. For the opening ten minutes, Leeds threatened to better that battering of Stoke under Bielsa. By the time Pascal Struijk rolled his penalty into the bottom corner to open the scoring, it could have been 4-0, Wilf Gnonto, Ethan Ampadu, and Ilia Gruev having all found different ways to hit the same crossbar.

If there was a problem, it was that it was too easy, lulling Leeds into a false sense of security. As United regrouped from a corner, full-backs Jayden Bogle and Junior Firpo switched sides out of necessity, then showed little urgency to switch back to their natural positions. Perhaps they decided there was no need to. Playing like inverted wingers and relishing the freedom that Gnonto and Georgi Rutter get to buzz off every game, they were enjoying themselves.

But when Bogle again found himself at left-back following a Portsmouth set-piece shortly afterwards, the memo was never passed on to Firpo, or the rest of the defence. Leeds were defending with two left-backs, but no right-back, allowing Portsmouth to pass the ball into the space where Bogle should have been, and Elias Sorensen to shoot into the space where Illan Meslier should have saved.

There is a danger of becoming too ‘Goals On Sunday’ every time Leeds concede, so all I will say on Portsmouth’s second is this: fair play, Callum Lang, whoever you are — but if you don’t smash the ball in from 25 yards every week then I am writing this one off as a complete fluke.

Leeds are facing a unique challenge this August. Fine margins cost the club promotion last season, and an obvious area for improvement is avoiding the same slow start to the campaign. That gave the atmosphere an air of late-season tension, not helped by the rain quite literally dampening the vibes of an opening day that was meant to be played in the summer sunshine.

Gnonto cleared the clouds within the first minute of the second half, incisively cutting in and returning to his favoured slap inside the near post from his brief ‘Keep Calm And Give It To Willy’ phase of his first year at Elland Road. But the gloom soon returned as the game settled into a pattern more familiar from last April, Leeds banging their heads against the wall of a team willing to sit back and soak up pressure. Joseph’s otherwise excellent full league debut was blemished by a shot over the bar when he needed to aim for the bottom corners. The chance was created by a pass into the box from Bogle, who later flashed an excellent ball across the six-yard box that missed Joseph’s forehead by millimetres. Fine margins, we meet again.

The frustration wasn’t all Leeds’ fault, though. Any chance of a game breaking out in the second half so United could generate some momentum was spoiled by a referee who was determined to show off the new whistle he’d bought for the new season as much as possible, awarding forty free-kicks, the most in a Leeds game since Opta first began counting these things over a decade ago. Clocking in at over 100 minutes, it was the longest game in the Championship this weekend, yet the ball was in play for the shortest amount of time. With only 47 minutes of actual football being played, supporters in the pricier sections of the ground were paying over a pound a minute for the privilege of telling the referee to fuck off over and over again.

Some fans had seen enough as the game entered stoppage time and were already heading for the exit, particularly after Portsmouth converted a penalty that was clumsily given away by Bogle. He could argue that the contact first started outside the box and Portsmouth’s Christian Saydee had as much a hold of him as the other way around. I would argue that he needs to be a bit more subtle than grabbing a striker around the neck in his own penalty area.

Maybe we’d have all been better off if the ref called it a day four minutes before he eventually blew the final whistle. That way he’d have left just enough time for Brenden Aaronson to grab a late equaliser but not enough time for Aaronson to miss a much easier chance to win it. “Like dog years, there should be Leeds years,” Bryn Law said in commentary on LUTV. “If the rest of the Championship season is going to be like this, then it’s going to be heavy on the heart.” Whether I like it or not, I wouldn’t have it any other way. ⬢

(Photograph by Action Plus Sports, via Alamy)