Sheffield Wednesday 1-1 Leeds United: Throwing up in a bush

Sean Longstaff stepped up to take Leeds United’s third penalty and the Sky Sports cameras panned to the away end at Hillsborough. It was emptying. They’d seen enough. Longstaff faced the difficult and perhaps futile task of keeping Leeds in the shootout after two teammates had fluffed their lines, while Sheffield Wednesday had scored all three spot kicks.

Longstaff, like Joel Piroe before him, hit a weak penalty at a perfect height for Ethan Horvath to save. Game over. Another cup campaign over before it could get going. Little is decided about the fate of a team — or its manager — in the second round of the League Cup, but it’s hard to avoid the nagging doubt brought on by watching a rotated Leeds side fail to beat a Wednesday team with an average age of 21.

Daniel Farke made nine changes to the eleven that capitulated in the 5-0 loss to Arsenal on Saturday and gave full debuts to Jaka Bijol, Sebastiaan Bornauw, Sean Longstaff, Lukas Nmecha and Noah Okafor, five of Leeds’ summer signings. The match began with Sky cameras pointed towards the condemned, empty North Stand at Hillsborough and Leeds fans singing, “We’re looking at Wednesday and having a laugh.” It’s an inflection of the Owls’ song about Leeds in 2016/17, when Garry Monk’s team collapsed in April to miss the play-offs while Wednesday reached the final and lost to Huddersfield.

But it was also a decent indicator of where the two teams were at. Leeds have spent £100m in the summer transfer window, while Wednesday’s ongoing financial and ownership troubles saw them name nine players under the age of 21, including several reserves and senior debutants.

Leeds played like a team that knew it was facing children in the first half, displaying a tepid dominance that bordered on arrogance, expecting their inexperienced opponents would make a mistake without being forced into doing so through some form of creativity. Leeds had 78% possession and created a series of half chances, mostly for Nmecha, but flattered to deceive for the most part. One might have expected Okafor’s debut to produce a few highlight moments, but he looked lethargic more times than not and played within himself like most of his teammates, none more so than Brenden Aaronson on the other wing.

Okafor did manage to create one moment of real quality, an accurate cross over the Wednesday defence that just about evaded Nmecha and met Aaronson at the back post, who did his best to swing a leg at it but without any real power at an awkward angle. Wednesday’s best chance of the first half came from a Leeds mistake, Bijol misreading a header before fouling Jamal Lowe, who stepped up to take the free kick and struck it narrowly wide.

Piroe went close with a free kick early in the second half, and then it happened. Wednesday had a bit of luck with a throw-in down the right wing before Lowe crossed and teenage midfielder Jarvis Thornton’s shot at goal was parried back out to Lowe who, from an impossible angle, attempted a low, weak shot into the grasp of Karl Darlow. Except it didn’t end there. Instead, the ball rolled through Darlow’s legs and spun over the line. Everyone was stunned, including the Wednesday players who appeared to run around in circles like a flock of seagulls that had just spotted someone drop a full bag of chips. Against all odds, Wednesday were in front in the 63rd minute.

Farke sent Jayden Bogle on eight minutes later to give Leeds some impetus on the right flank with Willy Gnonto, which seemed to work almost immediately. Gnonto had already tested ‘keeper Ethan Horvath with a rebound when Okafor was put in behind the defence and shot first time from Piroe’s through ball. If Okafor had taken a touch, he could well have had a better shooting angle to finish, but Horvath was having the match of his life, so it mightn’t have even mattered. It was just one of the seven big chances Leeds created on the night, one which preceded Bogle’s 81st minute equaliser after he and Gnonto combined down the right and the full-back showed greater composure than any Leeds attacker to shoot under Horvath.

Rather than continue with the right flank combination that was working, Farke substituted Okafor for Dan James and moved Gnonto to the left shortly after Leeds levelled. James did win a free kick pretty quickly after coming on, allowing Anton Stach to whip a ball across the six-yard box for substitute debutant Dominic Calvert-Lewin to attack, but he poked the ball wide. Another chance fell to Calvert-Lewin in the fifth and final minute of injury time, but Horvath read Gnonto’s cross and gave Leeds’ number nine almost no angle to shoot at.

The Peacocks’ new striker was getting in the right positions, at least, and he had a chance to gain some confidence by taking Leeds’ second penalty after Piroe’s effort was saved. But Calvert-Lewin’s effort summed up the entire night for Leeds United. He stepped up confidently and stared at the ball while taking a deep breath, then spooned it over the bar, leaving Longstaff with the thankless task of saving the shootout. Even if Longstaff had scored instead of telegraphing his penalty for Horvath to make a second save, it likely wouldn’t have mattered. Darlow had dived the wrong way for all three Wednesday penalties, presumably having been unable to put penalty taker information on his water bottle at the risk of obscuring the Red Bull branding, or maybe he just expected Leeds’ attack to do their job inside ninety minutes.

Either way, what should have been a routine, confidence building win turned into a worrying night for Farke and his team. Being dumped out of the cup is one thing — a biannual tradition in Leeds — but to do it against a club in total disarray only three days after receiving a serious reality check from Arsenal is another. Most Leeds fans probably woke up on Wednesday morning wanting to forget about last night. Instead of heading out for a casual pint with old friends, the night turned into a wrecking session that ended with them throwing up into a hedge. To make matters worse, the loss of captain Ethan Ampadu was compounded by Farke confirming that Ao Tanaka has a knee injury and is likely to be missing for “several weeks”.

When it rains, and all that. Leeds United are almost always a rollercoaster ride of emotion and it’s easy to forget that everyone was celebrating an opening day Premier League win against Everton just over a week ago. Nobody expected anything from the trip to Arsenal, but a 5-0 thrashing felt a tad excessive. What happens on Saturday at home to Newcastle and behind closed doors ahead of Monday’s transfer deadline is much more of an unknown, but it feels much more important — and anxious — now than it did when Elland Road’s PA system blasted I Predict a Riot last Monday night. ⬢

(Photograph by Danny Lawson/PA Images, via Alamy)