Forest continue their charge after nervous Leeds stumble again
After this, the latest defeat for the erstwhile runaway leaders Leeds United, the top of the Championship now resembles the Harrods crockery department on the first day of the sales. Packed, tense and nervy, scrapping for the spoils it is the most intensely competitive league in the game. And all the better for it.
Though inevitably in the mayhem there are victims. For Marcelo Bielsa, the Leeds manager, defeat brings further evidence that his team might be sinking at precisely the wrong moment. This result means they have now won just once in their last nine fixtures.
“It is a characteristic of the Championship that the top eight teams have all gone from good to bad,” he said after the match. “Of course we will never give up, never stop fighting, always keep faith. I just have to find new ways to find victory.”
In front of a noisy and expectant full house, the game started with Leeds, in urgent need of victory to calm the gathering nerves, having seemingly misplaced the progressive football which had got them so far this season.
Their manager, watching on his haunches from the technical area, must have spent much of the first half wondering why his players have suddenly lost the ability to pass a football.
Their sense of well-being was hardly improved by the fact Forest started as if propelled by Storm Ciara, piling forward in a whoosh of enthusiasm.
An early interchange between Joe Lolley and Lewis Grabban ended with the former Bournemouth man befuddling the Leeds defence, doing everything except produce a finish.
Tiago Silva then had a shot which Kiko Casilla, in the Leeds goal, saved easily, before making the Spaniard scramble with another shot five minutes later. In between Forest had a loud shout for a penalty when Joe Worrall was pulled over in the area by Liam Cooper. A pattern was being established.
In response, Leeds’s attacks could not find a way through. They lacked precision in the pass, the final ball skimming off shins and knees. There was a moment of sustained ping-pong when three successive passes went to the opposition. It was like watching the rugby from Murrayfield.
Leeds tried to demonstrate they still retained a modicum of guile. Patrick Bamford neatly headed down Pablo Hernandez’s cross, but to the feet of a Forest defender. Hernandez then set up Ezgjan Alioski whose shot was pushed wide by Brice Samba.
But then the thing that every Leeds fan feared, happened. Forest took the lead. After a ferocious tackle from Worrall had catapulted the ball forward, Sammy Ameobi took control. He exchanged a one-two with Lolley and galloped through the Leeds back line. He then confused Casilla by putting his shot to the near post, when the keeper was expecting it to go to the far.
Leeds, who have gone behind in every match they have played since Dec 14, were falling apart again.
Stuart Dallas suggested things were not going to improve much in the second half by immediately passing straight into touch as Leeds opened with a couple of attacks. Then a superb run by the increasingly influential Lolley, demonstrating a level of ambition unmatched by any of the visiting players, beat three men as he charged into the Leeds area. He passed to Grabban who dummied a shot to drift past Cooper. Bemused by the dummy, Casilla had already dived. But when Grabban did shoot, his effort bounced straight off the Spaniard’s prone body.
As the game developed into a proper scrap, it was Leeds who seemed less inclined than the home side to battle.
Grabban’s slide tackle to break up a Leeds attack, coming away with the ball and passing forwards, summed up the difference. Bamford and Hernandez, so often at the heart of Leeds play when things were going well, were both substituted after contributing nothing of note.
Forest’s problem, however, was that, for all their physical superiority, they were only one goal ahead, and Leeds still had players capable of rescuing another alarming collapse.
When Samba was obliged to scramble away Cooper’s header from a corner, the nerves began to gather in the stands. For the last 10 minutes, as the swirling wind began to increase, every clearance was cheered to the echo, every long hoof out of defence celebrated as if it were a cup final winner.
Leeds flew forward. Attacks poured down the flanks. Crosses rained into the Forest box. Finally, with their manager waving them up the pitch constantly, Bielsa’s players seemed to have woken up to their predicament.
For the four minutes of added time the home fans’ nails were chewed to the bone. But, as it had all game, a final, telling pass remained elusive for Leeds.
And when Forest broke clear from a Leeds free-kick in the final moment, the resulting goal from substitute Tyler Walker ensured the home now sit just one point behind the Yorkshire side.
When asked if his players had the mental strength for the fight ahead, Forest manager Sabri Lamouchi said: “That is a good question, I don’t know them, we will see. But tonight I love them.”
This is some story unfolding in the Championship. Better still, no one can have the first inkling how it might conclude.