Premier League Match 2 - Southampton 2 Leeds United 2

 

Kyle Saves The Day

Leeds, Leeds dirty Leeds in our first home game of the season and one which presents the most likely chance of getting three points out of the opening five games. Whilst I would normally have this one down as a ‘must win’, after the Spurs defeat and performance, I would settle for a point and putting in at half decent performance.

Leeds had an interesting summer with losing their two best players in Raphinha and Kalvin Phillips but they have been active in the transfer market and the general feeling amongst Leeds fans is that they have a better squad than last year with the arrivals of in particular Brenden Aaronson, Marc Roca, Tyler Adams and Luis Sinisterra. Not easy to tell at this point of course but it’s good to have optimism I guess. They started the season with a decent win against Wolves but as it stands at the moment, I would expect Leeds to be better than last season but still in the bottom six or seven clubs at the end of season.  Jesse Marsch is in his first full season and I find him a somewhat grating personality but he did a job that he was employed to do at the tail end of last season so good luck to him.

In the week leading up to the Leeds game there was the fans forum which was a little bit spiky but no more than you’d expect given our current form but none of the exchanges between the fans present and Martin Semmens or Ralph, were anything too controversial. Semmens repeated his line that 90% of what you read in the media is wrong and to prove it, said that we would not be loaning Che Adams out to anyone, which was a media narrative this week. There were a couple of questions where the answers were I think, misinterpreted to give people something additional to be angry about.  I really am in two minds about these forums because on the one hand, it’s good to engage with fan groups but on the other, I’m not sure that anything positive ever really comes out of them.

On the heels of that, the Daily Bastard Mail, the ultimate piece of shit newspaper along with the Sun, reported that Ralph had lost the dressing room and hinted at “sources” leaking information that some players went to senior figures on the board in the close season to raise questions about Ralph’s continued employment.  The article was penned by the Daily Bastard’s North East reporter.  A bit odd considering Southampton is as far away from the North East as you can get before you hit France.

First of all, the story could be completely made up, cobbled together from the fans forum issues and various other sources, maybe even this one that you are reading.  Anyone could have written it.  Not that The Daily Bastard ever makes anything up.

Assuming for a second that it isn’t completely made up bullshit, I have absolutely no fucking time whatsoever for players who do this. It’s more than likely going to be players who are not in the team and if you are a Premier League footballer and you can’t get into our team then you are the type of character who can’t motivate yourself and therefore wants to blame everybody else for your failings anyway. We have too many players with a soft mentality and no desire to improve themselves so it’s much easier to blame the manager. Player power can fuck right off especially when the players in question are clearly not performing. There are always going to be disgruntled players when the team is not doing particularly well and there are players who are not involved but there are many reasons why we have too many players at the moment and one of the reasons is no one wants to buy any of the useless fuckers who are not in the team.  The leak could also have come from an ex-player who left the summer it was not particularly happy about having to do so but it’s the link with the north-east I find most baffling/interesting.

All that will happen is what happened in the wake of the 9-0 defeat against Leicester in the board said to the players in question, you will be leaving before the manager does. I don’t buy the talkSPORT line that this is the beginning of the end for the manager, I actually think it will make his position stronger.

One thing that is certain is that things are on edge at the moment so we could undoubtedly do with a result today.  Back to the football and I am of course hoping that they are changes after last week and I think there will be. Whether they go far enough it’s another matter. As the team news landed there was the welcome inclusion of Armel Bella-Kotchap, Stuart Armstrong and Che Adams.  Moi Elyounoussi came in from nowhere and replaced Joe Aribo who dropped to the bench…. Strange.  It was the back 3 again with both Bednarek and Djenepo keeping their places.  Worryingly, Romain Perraud wasn’t even on the bench.

It’s quite a cagey opening with Leeds pressing us well but Saints lokoing more solid than they did against Spurs, though this is not difficult. On about 20 minutes Elyounoussi seizes on a loose ball in midfield and gets his head up and slides a ball through to Stuart Armstrong who is virtually clean through. As he tries to accelerate away, Llorente just wipes out everything, man and ball. Nothing given by the man with a whistle up his ass but when the ball does go out of play, we do get a VAR check and off we go to Stockley Park..

“Hi this is Stockley Park, Simon Hooper speaking, would you mind confirming your identity?”

“Okay, I am Tony Harrington Premier League referee”.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m new to the list this season. I’ve been promoted from the Manchester Sunday League Division 8 because John Moss, Mike Dean and Martin Atkinson can’t be arsed anymore and are now full-time VAR officials”

“Fair enough, Do you wanna have a look at that challenge by Llorente on Armstrong?”
“No mate, I’ve made my decision and we can’t have me being undermined on my big day now can we?”

“I’ve had a quick look and he gets the ball but he’s scythed through his leg to get there”

“Remember the directive, light touch, so for the first few weeks of the season at least you can steam through someone as long as you get a tiny little bit of the ball, it’s fine. Have you checked that with anyone else Hoops?”

“Kind of. Mossy is on the third course of a five-course dinner and he did actually look up at the screen whilst letting out enormous burp and Big Mikey D is in the corner with some strippers, shouting “I am the law”.

“Sorry Hoops, I’m not charging the decision with 3000 Leeds nut jobs at one end of the ground and that odd American dude is still fist pumping in the air after the tackle.”

“Fuck it, leave it then”.

“Will do Hoops”

Oh well, would’ve been handy playing against 10 men.

Armstrong is involved again as KWP gets down the right hand side and gets over a cross which is met by the magnificently haired Scotsman but it bounces off a defender back off of Stu and off for a goal kick.

Leads have basically sussed that the referee is fucking useless and are now leaving a foot in whenever they can and fair enough, it’s working. Llorente takes it one step further and plays basketball to control a ball and is allowed to play on. His pass to Rodrigo though is intercepted by ABK who just sets off, driving forward to the edge of the box and smashing in the left foot shot which went about a yard wide. Brilliant effort.

Patrick Bamford, as we all know is made of biscuits and he unfortunately breaks down again with no one near him, so he has to be substituted and on comes little shit Dan James to present us with a different type of problem. When he actually bothers to stay on his feet, James is a decent player and he gets himself in on goal in the inside left channel and gets in a good effort across the keeper but Big Baz puts out a strong hand to push it wide.

Half-time and again we can only assume that Ralph said “go out and play like a lot of wankers for the first couple of minutes so if we can let a goal in and make it really difficult for ourselves“, because that’s exactly what we did as a couple of shanked clearances saw the ball end up with Jack Harrison out on the left and his cross took out everybody and found Rodrigo, who darted in front of Still-in-Bednarek to flick it past Baz. Fucks sake.

Saints looks slightly stunned and all of a sudden you start to notice more than you did in the first half that we have got absolutely no way of attacking. None of the defenders are good enough to pass through the lines and the midfielders are too static and don’t open up passing lines to make it easy for them. Whilst this lack of attacking is going on, Leeds win a corner on the right, in it comes and Struijk gets up to nod goalwards and it loops up over Baz and Rodrigo knocks it in from practically on the goal line. Clearly onside, 2-0, fuck it.

Ralph rolls the dice and brings on Adam Armstrong and Aribo in like for like changes for Elyounoussi and Stuart Armstrong who have been shite and average respectively.  After a few minutes of nothing much aside from a soft Aribo header from a Djenepo cross, another change as Ralph brings on Sekou Mara and takes off Back-to-Bednarek, so we have reverted to 4-2-2-2 with them Arma out on the left.

Here Comes the Aribo Dance

Arma is immediately involved, playing a good 1-2 with Che before crossing the ball low into Aribo who seems to have taken too long as Meslier comes to challenge him but he skips around him with the ball tied to his toe and smashes it into the net. Just maybe….

Mara isn’t involved much in his first five minutes on the pitch but then he comes alive, picking up a ball from Adams on the edge of the box and he produces a lovely turn to make himself space and then slide the ball superbly in between the centre back in full back to pick up KWP’s run and he keeps his nerve to bury it under Meslier to make it 2-2.

Mara is in the game now and straight after that he picks up another chest-down from Adams and find himself half a yard before hammering in a shot with his right foot which is heading towards the top corner but unfortunately Meslier sees it all the way and parries it away.  Of course we have a minor scare as Leeds have one more attack which ends in big Baz having to beat away a shot which is straight at him.  The end and one point gained rather than two lost.

Maybe the North-East correspondent for the Daily Bastard Mail can write a piece about how often teams that are not playing for the manager come back from 2-0 down with 20 minutes to go?

Daily Mail - It's Shit

It wasn’t the perfect performance by any means but at least there was some encouragement. For the first 70 minutes we were pretty stodgy and didn’t look like we had a goal in us. The big change of course came when we reverted to a flat back four and Sekou Mara came on and that, added to the impetus provided by the earlier substitutes, Joe Aribo and Adam Armstrong, completely changed the game around and maybe even changed the narrative of our season.  Leeds were very good for the first 70 minutes and deserved their lead because of the way they snapped into all the challenges and the way they worked out exactly how far they could go with the referee who was on the lenient side. Whether it was just because Leeds ran out of steam because and couldn’t play with that intensity for 90 minutes or whether it was because they just wilted when they were put under a bit of pressure is hard to tell.

What isn’t hard to tell is that Jesse Marsch is a bit of a bell-end. Anyone who goes into full Klopp fist-pumping celebration mode when they win a fucking corner is clearly a little bit of a dick. Interesting that the DJ played “American Idiot” at half-time – I see you Mr DJ.

Leeds were just about the better side in the first half and certainly played with more intent. Having said that, there was a key moment when Stuart Armstrong was put through and got cleaned out man and ball by Diego Llorente. I know that Llorente brushes the ball with his studs but he’s already scissored Armstrong‘s back leg by that point so again I’m wondering what they are looking at in the VAR room. I think it’s one of those that if the ref had given the free kick and sent him off, it wouldn’t have been overturned.

The second half started with our usual concession of a goal within 30 seconds but unlike last week, there was no offside flag to save us. The second goal was just a standard header from a corner although there was an element of luck involved in the way Struijk’s header looped off up, which took Bazunu out of the game and allowed Rodrigo to head in from virtually under the crossbar.

Ralph got his substitutions right today with Stuart Armstrong having been pretty ineffective but still much better than Elyounoussi, who was shocking. The guy doesn’t run when we have got the ball. He just stands there with all passing lanes to him blocked and doesn’t make an angle. Joe Aribo and Adam Armstrong immediately made things better before the switch to a back four electrified us. Aribo had the ball tied to his foot before eventually slotting in Adam Armstrong‘s pull-back from the left and the second goal is a ridiculous pass from Mara inside the full back for KWP to finish. The roof would have come off off if Mara’s no-backlift snapshot from the edge of the box had found the top corner and not forced a very good save out of Meslier.  2-0 and you fucked it up as Give It Away by the Red Hot Chili Peppers played at the end. Yes Mr DJ, I noticed.

So, the flat back four. When we went for it at the end of the game it was really noticeable how ABK and Salisu stepped up. When you only have two centre backs you have absolutely no choice but to take responsibility.  Back threes take much more communication. The first goal is a classic example of the back three not working as Rodrigo made a diagonal run away from Salisu and in front of Bednarek.  Bednarek it wasn’t looking and was unaware he was there and probably didn’t get a call.  Overall, Bednarek had another poor, passive game and should not be the middle one of the three if that’s the way we go. I know they are young and raw and will make mistakes but ABK and Salisu should certainly be the two centre backs if we play a four. We’ve already proved in two games that we make mistakes in a back three and it hasn’t tightened us up at all, so we may as well have the extra attacking player on the pitch.

Talking of attacking – stop the press but Moussa Djenepo was excellent today.  Defensively, he is still a train wreck but he was the only one looking to provide a spark in the first hour of the game and if we revert to the 4-2-2-2 formation, has certainly done enough today to earn himself a chance on the left wing, certainly ahead of Elyounoussi.  Che Adams showed exactly why he has to be the focal point of the attack as he led a 90 minute battle with Leeds centre backs. With a better referee he would’ve won a lot more free -kicks around the box but his presence and work ethic certainly helped the cause today.  Adam Armstrong also had a good day as a sub on the left hand side and the combination play with Adams that led to Aribo’s goal was excellent.

So, a point feels a bit like a win bearing in mind where we were with 20 minutes to go. An important point for Ralph and the club as a whole which leaves everybody feeling have a little better then if we’d just limped to a 2-0 defeat. Ralph couldn’t resist a little dig post match about changing the headlines and we move on to Leicester next week. It will be very interesting to see how Ralph goes with the team selection because Leicester have not started the season particularly well so it’s not as if they are playing with a lot of confidence. I say go with the flat back four and take the game to them.