A good point?
Gut instinct said this was a good point for Leeds United. The Whites began the day outside the relegation zone on goal difference alone, with three clean sheets all season and three wins from their last 18 matches in all competitions.
When the division’s eighth-placed team, unbeaten in seven games since October 23, arrives at Elland Road it cannot be seen as an easy match or a gimme Leeds have to win. Regardless of how little time they have spent in the top flight or how much smaller their attendances may be, Brentford are a very good football team.
To hold that very good football team to a draw, concede no goals or seriously dangerous moments and be the better team on the day, deserves credit. Clean sheets have not been easy to come by for the Whites, so it’s a small step forward in that regard too.
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Yes, Leeds remain in a perilous position and home games, especially against those sides outside the traditional big six, have to be where they collect the lion’s share of the points which keep them in this division. Yes, the attack looked narrow at points and devoid of ideas against a low block when inspiration may have been sought from the bench sooner.
However, this is a head coach who some felt may have been sacked this weekend had he lost in midweek and on Sunday. Nine days before the Brentford match there were pockets in the United away end at Villa Park calling for his dismissal.
To go from that nadir to taking a point, with a clean sheet, from one of the league’s most in-form sides has to be seen as progress of some kind. This was not a swashbuckling display which cut the Bees apart, nor did it have the attacking verve of the last two outings, but there are at least the foundations of something for Marsch forming.
The same caveats applied to Sunday’s dropped points will not be applicable to matches on the horizon with Nottingham Forest, Everton and Southampton.
A colossal partnership
Liam Cooper’s absence from Sunday’s match proved to be the elephant in the room at 1pm. While the captain had missed Wednesday’s Cardiff City win with a knee issue, he was reported fit by Marsch in Friday’s press conference.
The head coach would go on to say Cooper should be back in training this week, but a small niggle on Saturday in the knee meant he was taken out of the firing line. In Cooper’s absence, though, something with potential had a chance to develop.
The assumption had been Max Wober, bought to solve the left-back problem this month, would start at left-back, but he was kept inside alongside Robin Koch and Pascal Struijk returned to the flank. While Struijk remains steady, that’s a solution which may continue to bear fruit for the Whites.
Wober was outstanding in the middle and this nascent statistic about zero concessions with the Austrian on the field is slowly gaining some traction. Wober was commanding, lead from the front and was happy to be a voice in the backline, despite his little time with the squad.
The 24-year-old was firm in the tackle, knew when to go to ground, when to stay on his feet, when to get tight to Ivan Toney, when to sweep in behind, which pass to play and when. He was nearly flawless and he drew the same kind of level of performance from Koch, who had looked flaky in recent weeks.
The German’s suspension for the Forest trip next month should make it a straightforward return for Cooper, but with Luke Ayling and Struijk decent in the full-back slots this was a quartet which worked. It’s more competition for places and the kind of fight Marsch wants Cooper to have for his place in the line-up.
Some can’t believe there’s no Rutter
The fanfare around the club’s record signing was always going to grow as we went into the first opportunity to watch Georginio Rutter play in Leeds white. Despite the fact player and head coach had each played down his sharpness going into the fixture, if he’s named on the bench hope was only going to grow on the terraces.
With the match poised at 0-0 and only two substitutions made, Marsch looked only to Sam Greenwood as the clock reached the 87th minute. For some fans looking to see the deadlock broken, it was hard to fathom why a record-signing for the frontline was not even thrown on for a five-minute burst.
“We thought about it,” Marsch would say post-match. “I could have done it. I just want to integrate him the right way and I felt like Willy [Gnonto] was close to pulling off a play, so I felt like leaving him on.
“Jack [Harrison]'s performance was really strong. When you have new players, you always want to set them up to succeed and so in the end [I] decided maybe we wait one more week until we unleash him.”
Those are the calls Marsch is paid a lot of money to make. Would a short burst from the bench have had such a debilitating impact on Rutter’s coming weeks of the season? Time will tell, but what fans do know is the team failed to score without even trying him out.
What state will the season be in when Leeds next play at Elland Road?
It’s a long wait for Elland Road football now. Three weeks separate the Brentford and Manchester United clashes. The landscape of how Marsch’s season maps out could see significant changes by the time we are all reunited in LS11.
First, we head to either Accrington Stanley or Boreham Wood in the FA Cup. Naturally, the result of that tie will decide whether Leeds are, or are not, going to have the pleasant distraction of a rare cup run in the coming weeks.
Beyond that, there are two big games in the space of three days in the Premier League. The trips to Forest, long circled as one of the away matches Leeds need something from, and Manchester United, an unhappy hunting ground since promotion, will dictate the mood at Elland Road on February 12.
If drawing to Brentford at home is an acceptable result then going away to newly-promoted Forest has to be the kind of match Leeds take something from. Roughly, United need another 20 points or six wins and a few draws to stay in the division.
Forest, and February, need to generate a decent slice of the points which take them into the mid-20s. Old Trafford, which of course has important, historic connotations for the fan base far beyond the league state, has the power to change the mood and tone of the entire month.
The aggregate score from the last two trips there leaves Leeds 11-3 down. Those were humbling, horrendous matches which left everyone involved shellshocked.
The Red Devils are on an upward curve and expectations for taking anything at their place will rightly be low, but the tone and manner of the game will provide the platform for the sequel at Elland Road and then those seismic games with Everton and Southampton.
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