Improve on Monday and lose 4-0
One of the quirks of dishing out player ratings in this job is trying to justify higher marks in a 4-0 loss than were given for a 0-0 draw away from home. Leeds United played better on Saturday, but had nothing to show for it, largely because of Manchester City’s finishing.
As both head coaches said, this was not a four-goal game. Two set-pieces turned the match. The third goal came on the break and the fourth was perhaps down to wandering concentration in the dying embers of the encounter.
Unfortunately, for all of the small improvements being made, time is running out and the opponents are not getting much easier. United do not have another three months to refine Jesse Marsch’s tactical blueprint, they need results now and quickly.
READ MORE: Every word Jesse Marsch said on Stuart Dallas, referee 'strategy', Leeds United relegation fight
And yet, Marsch has been delivering results. The performances have not been pretty, but stumping up 11 points from the 15 available before Saturday has proved some feat and absolutely critical when you see the plight Leeds are in, even with those points.
The head coach continues to speak confidently, clearly and positively about every facet of the team he can when he faces the media. That’s the way he has to be and the way he believes he will keep the players on track.
Describing 4-0 losses like victories will jar with some when the league table has United’s fate in someone else’s hands, but it’s evidently the message Marsch wants to get through to the players.
The results, the points, have been there for Leeds in recent weeks. If anything, City has to be described as a blip with one look at the form book. Two factors have Leeds in peril: the depth of the hole they were in when Marsch arrived and the form of Burnley.
Hertfordshire pain
The real sadness and anxiety of Saturday landed before kick-off even came at Elland Road. Burnley won three of their first 28 matches before taking four in their last six. How? What? Why?
Nobody of a Leeds persuasion should have been surprised to see the Clarets go from 1-0 down in the 82nd minute at Watford to 2-1 up by the 86th. This is just the way it ebbs and flows in this club’s universe.
Whether you like to admit it or not, Leeds fans were counting chickens of their own at Vicarage Road on April 9 and then treating them to a pub lunch one day later when, now relegated, Norwich City defeated Sean Dyche’s Burnley. They were down and Leeds were safe.
For the Turf Moor outfit to dispense with Dyche, the only thing we have been led to believe keeping them in the top flight for all these years, and then win 10 points from 12 would have been thought unfathomable.
With the kind of relentless pain of Sheffield United’s automatic promotion hunt in 2019, the Clarets are delivering big three-point loads just as Leeds slip to draws and fixtures with top-four contenders. Is it Everton? It seems like Everton are the ones.
We’re at that part of the year where you cannot even limit your Leeds-related football stress to one 90-minute burst. It’s putting yourself through the wringer with Everton on Sunday, then Burnley next Saturday before dual-screening Leeds at Arsenal with Everton at Leicester.
The fact is, none of this is in United’s control anymore. If Everton win their two games in hand they go a point clear of Leeds and Burnley. The former’s goal difference would take them down if they all finished on the same points tally.
The penny dropped on that small fact yesterday when you saw the Whites and Clarets locked on the same points and matches played. The weight of those 20 goals conceded before Bielsa’s exit are weighing heavy right now.
United need favours, starting with Chelsea, the champions of Europe.
The season that keeps on giving
Stuart Dallas had started 121 of United’s previous 122 league games, stretching back to April 2019, when he hit the deck with a serious knee injury on Saturday afternoon. That incredibly consistent form and supreme conditioning included a raft of awards for a stellar season in the Premier League last year.
In a campaign where the injury curse seems to have hit everyone in the Leeds camp, including goalkeeper Illan Meslier, there was something cruelly inevitable about Dallas being struck down too. As Marsch said post-match, the Northern Ireland international has become the heart and soul of this squad.
His experience, leadership, calmness, versatility, fight, grit and wisdom will be sorely missed by United as they had into a pivotal final four matches. We can only hope the next set of scans provide better news than the first one did.
Liam Cooper had to limp away too, though in a far less dramatic fashion. For example, he was by the tunnel awaiting all the players as they came off at full-time without any crutches.
The captain has four months out with injury, returns to become arguably the best player in the side across the last two matches and then suffers a new issue in the final minutes before facing the best team in the league. What a bleak and miserable campaign this has been.
The 12th man
If you did not have the privilege of being in attendance on Saturday, one can only hope the television coverage did the Elland Road crowd some justice on the day. The pre-match din was arguably the loudest point of the season, but it was a record soon broken by a cacophony of support that only grew as the City goals went in.
It was a defiant crowd. While the loss to Aston Villa in March provoked toxic anger and abuse for the directors’ box, this stimulated a siege mentality and togetherness in the stands, regardless of what was playing out on the field.
The supporters could see enough in the performance to get behind and had the undeniable, expensively-assembled quality of City as a reminder of why a 4-0 loss is so tolerable. This is the mood Leeds will need if they are to stay in this division.
Many are clinging to the mid-table comfort of Brighton & Hove Albion and Brentford as the final two matches of the season to save Leeds’ bacon. The former will be the last home opposition of the term and as the last two campaigns have shown, Graham Potter’s Leeds record is excellent.
For a team with so little to play for beyond prize money, the Seagulls are having an annoyingly strong finish to the season as Leeds creep onto their radar. Before sticking three past Wolverhampton Wanderers yesterday, they beat Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur away last month too.
If Leeds are to narrow that gap in the league table to Brighton, and Chelsea too four days early, the home crowd has to play its part.
