Beesotted’s Jim Levack looks back at the trip to Elland Road and recalibrates his head after a stormy second half where emotions ran high.
It took me half an hour to calm down after the Leeds game but as I reached the car, deep down I was bursting with pride. Of course I was livid at the gifting of a needless last ditch equaliser to a Leeds side vaunted way above its actual ability because of the media deification of its manager.
But my anger at seeing the ecstatic home faithful, some among them the most arrogant, emboldened, smug fans in the country, soon subsided as head started to rule heart once more. It didn’t help that it was Bamford, the media’s darling posh boy playing for a working man’s club, who bundled the winner home.
I say winner. That’s how it felt after we’d returned to playing the exciting counter attacking football that got us here to leave the home fans – in the other corner this time – with seemingly no option but to hurl abuse and missiles after Sergi’s ill-advised taunts.
Are Leeds like this with all opposition players or just the ones from the team that they definitely don’t have a rivalry with?
I’m sure they’ll be punished for it and can then add it to their growing list of perceived slights against us, which apparently doesn’t constitute rivalry because they’re too big for that. Champions of Europe they remind us.
Anyway, enough of Yorkshire’s ‘finest’ – a small but noisy minority fuelled by hate and the unshakeable belief that they’re still a global phenomenon unrepresentative of the many reasonable Leeds fans I know – and back to my reasons to be cheerful.
There are issues yes, possibly born of a little over confidence on the part of our club who should have known better – bad luck aside. I can‘t help feeling we didn’t plan well enough or were beaten to player targets who might have provided more back up in what was always going to be the most intense, physically and mentally demanding season in the club’s history.
Going into it with no recognised, experienced right back was foolhardy. But keeping with the theme, there’s a flip side to every down and Sergi’s form has been a revelation.
He’s stepped up a level, will have learned a lot about the defensive side of his game and earned himself a position in the Leeds Dungeon of Fame alongside Neal Maupay. Good work Sergi.
Throw in the fact that Mads Roerslev is young but getting better with every game at this level and the future’s bright. Wissa was a revelation in his cameo and there’s more to come from him.
The fact that both goals came from gifts incensed me, but to single out individuals thrust into it in their first season and possibly ahead of their PL-ready date really isn’t fair or helpful. The problem, in a nutshell, is that they’ll learn from their mistakes, but the danger is we can’t afford too many.
We also have the smallest budget in the division and arguably the most inexperienced group of players competing in the most technically gifted and physically powerful league on the planet.
All that considered – and quickly dismissed by many, including me when angry – many of us are still applying League One and Championship thinking to our emotional, knee-jerk responses to minor setbacks. In reality, draws at established sides such as Newcastle and Leeds and a 2-0 defeat at Champions League contenders Spurs hardly merit the social media meltdown they provoke. This is going to be a point by point crusade.
Yes, there were mistakes which cost us. Yes, individuals make blunders (they’re human and learning) and yes, we do need to strengthen in January.
That too creates an issue that most fans don’t consider. Thomas Frank trusts his players, defends them to the end and wants to keep the squad lean so numbers, morale and motivation can be carefully managed. The decision making on bringing new faces in at such a critical stage in the season has to be, as Thomas might say, bang on.
One point instead of three is a choker, especially so late on and the natural instinct is to vent online, but it’s one I’ve learned to temper until I’m calm.
I left Elland Road fuming with my sons fand both turned to me as if I were the ‘child’ to remind me “six years ago you’d have taken being annoyed at a last-minute equaliser in the Premier League and 12th place at Christmas’. They are, of course, right.
There are things I’d have done differently to Thomas, but then I don’t know what goes on in training, whether a player has woken up with a stomach bug or hamstring twinge. What I would say is he’s got it right pretty much all of the time this season.
Luck and its part in the Justice League placing hasn’t been with us and we’ve lacked a ball carrier to make the transitions from defence into attack, forcing us to go longer. Shandon returns and we looked our old selves again.
There have been huge plusses too. Silent heroes Pontus Jansson and Rico Henry, surely the best left back in the league, have been the very definition of consistency.
We always knew Christian Norgaard was a class act but his reading of the game and efficient movement of the ball in key positions is so masterful it’s worth spending five minutes just watching him alone.
Ivan Toney has been a talisman, his link up play, workrate and defensive attitude incredible, but against Leeds we proved we’re no one man team.
Bryan Boomo – surely the BBC can’t be wrong? – would be in the top three scorers but for the woodwork. His movement, pace and eye for goal has been incredible, possibly without the end product. He’s only just turned 22 by the way.
So if we don’t rout Watford – a decent side playing well – stop, count to 100 and remember where we are, what the pre-season target might have been and enjoy the ride.
If we lose games, then as Thomas says “the sun will still come up tomorrow” and things could be worse… we could be one of those bitter-at-the-world Leeds fans.
Jim Levack
