UNITED READY TO ROLL AGAIN
Refreshed Leeds are determined to finish promotion job on the pitch
IT SAYS much about the selfbelief at Leeds United that they badly wanted this Championship season to resume.
It looked like there might well be an easy way out for the Whites.
With the Football League and Football Association seemingly determined to protect promotion and relegation whether the domestic season is completed or not, throwing the towel in on 2019-20 would more than likely have seen Leeds playing Premier League football for the first time since 2004.
As insurance policies go, having the authorities Leeds fans are historically so suspicious of fighting their corner is a pretty good one.
If we thought this season was just about Leeds getting back up to the top division, however they did it, we were wrong. They badly want to do it properly. That suggests any demons from last season are not lurking.
If the pandemic had hit just a few weeks earlier, we might not have been so sure. Leeds were in a worryingly familiar tailspin, winning just two of 12 matches and conceding in all of them. Their first-choice goalkeeper was facing a lengthy racism suspension.
Just in the nick of time, the ship was righted. The last five matches were won without a goal conceded. The start of Kiko Casilla’s eight-match ban, which in truth some supporters were not too saddened by given his shaky form in the downturn, had been absorbed.
We knew all along if it was just down to footballing ability this season, Marcelo Bielsa’s team would be promoted, the question was if we might have a repeat of 2018-19.
This new behind-closeddoors world after three months of match-day inactivity throws up all manner of unknowns, but the mentality Leeds’ players showed after a worryingly long time wobbling on the ropes ought to put minds a bit more at rest.
Against Fulham, Luton Town, Stoke City, Barnsley and Charlton Athletic, Leeds will not have the power of a packed Elland Road behind them, but nor will they have the inevitable and understandable anxiousness when things are not going to plan.
Missing out on the mother of all promotion parties will be a huge loss to fans put through the wringer for a decade-and-a-half, but for the players it takes out another variable.
The more it comes down to pure football talent, the better their chances.
They managed to stack the deck in their favour anyway.
What had been whittled down to a goal-difference advantage to the play-off places is now seven points – a lot to make up in nine matches when you start without any momentum.
Avoid defeat in their first home game, against third-placed Fulham a week on Saturday, and
the finish line comes that bit closer for Leeds. First, though, they will have to negotiate the bogeymen of Cardiff City this Sunday.
Nine games in 31 days will test everyone, but those who believe in “Bielsa burnout” – and the coach it is named after is certainly not one – can be reassured that those, like Kalvin Phillips, who were starting to show a little wear and tear have been given time to refresh.
Unsurprisingly, it seems the
Leeds players have not been allowed to take it at all easy in lockdown, though.
With new doubts over JeanKevin Augustin’s fitness, it could be Tyler Roberts’s time to put pressure on Patrick Bamford, still frustratingly hit-and-miss when it comes to his core business of scoring goals.
After two goals at Hull City in February, it sums up the Welshman’s Elland Road career that he has had only 11 substitute minutes since.
Jack Harrison, Luke Ayling and Illan Meslier, in particular, were in rhythms that did not need disrupting but will still return as top players, just rusty ones facing opponents in the same predicament.
Hopefully for Leeds fans, this pause has only delayed Phillips’s England debut.
We must wait and see what effect
STEPPING UP: Tyler Roberts, above, can increase the pressure on striker Patrick Bamford as coach Marcelo Bielsa, inset, plots apath to the Premier League. all the time Leeds’ players have had to think about the enormity of what they could be about to do has, but there is no question they will return extremely hungry.
So long as they channel it correctly, it should be a good thing.
The inspiring leadership of captain Liam Cooper, one of the team’s boyhood fans, will be important, as will be Bielsa’s experience.
Some teams and players are bound to return a little halfhearted or distracted, wondering what they have to play for, worrying what news the next covid-19 tests might bring, or questioning if playing for a club they will be leaving in the summer is worth the risks.
If there have been any such rumblings at Elland Road, where Gaetano Berardi is the only senior player whose contract is up and most loanees have a realistic chance of staying if the club is promoted, they have been well hidden.
Leeds feel like a group of players desperate to play again, to finish the job they started and bury the ghosts of last season.
Something special is in sight and while second-guessing anything in this odd final leg of the season is difficult, it seems safe to say they are determined to grasp it.