Watford 2 Leeds United 2 (29/03/2024)

1-  Timing means that this is going to be a different sort of report.

There’s only so many hours in the day, dear reader, and a kick-off at 8pm on Good Friday doesn’t leave you much wriggle room if you’ve got a good hour’s drive once you’ve gotten out of Watford, only to drive back the next morning for an Event.  Thus, I’m writing this 24 hours after kick off and much as last night was thrilling we’re passed the stage where any “big learnings” piece, let alone a blow-by-blow, adds much.  So this is going to be largely vibes.  But such vibes. 

The Event in question is a Batmitzvah,  our invite coming from Felix and his wife, parents of the daughter in question.  Felix has been my neighbour at Vicarage Road – Daughters 1 and 2 permitting – since he walked into Leeds University Union wearing the grotesque blue-and-white chessboard away kit of the time well over 30 years ago.  The next two years saw many trips around England, including dicing with trouble with scarves flying all the way back up the M1 after this fixture in 1992. 

It’s my second visit to a synagogue;  the first, a mere 20 years ago, for his wedding.  This time there is heavy if cordial security…  without wishing to wander into reckless territory, indicative that irrespective of faith there are some foul people in the world.

None of them are here, though.  This is a fine event all round which concludes with a lot of food at a Bushey restaurant.  Many of the guests are of an appropriate persuasion of course, and are bound even stronger on this occasion. There’s an odd giveaway noticeable by anyone paying attention, a sparkle in the eyes akin to the blue glow of the Fremen in Dune.  Daughter 2 has it in spades, so too Felix’s brother and nephew.  Felix and his son have it, and they didn’t even make the game due to their pre-Event duties here but it’s contagious and undeniable.  His Dad, Joe, sums it up best.  “I’ve not enjoyed a game that much in years…”.

2- Wind back to Friday evening.  Let’s say…  8.45ish.  Emmanuel Dennis is haring towards the Sir Elton John Stand and the stadium – barring the rammed away section – is collectively doing its nut.

This is Vicarage Road  at it’s finest…  an evening kick-off, for one thing.  This stadium is ours and home.  We know it’s special for all sorts of reasons that might not be immediately apparent to a neutral, let alone a rival.  But even the most journeyed supporter would surely concede that there’s nowhere that quite sucks in the darkness like Vicarage Road on such occasions.  

It’s also noisy.  Daughter 2 and I are fuelled, as is long traditional, by the stunning Tandoori Chicken and Masala fries with curry sauce available in the Upper GT concourse… I mean, don’t go telling everyone because we wouldn’t want to have to queue for it or anything but jesus.  

But even those not similarly rocket powered are noisy tonight.  Birmingham was obviously critical in this regard… never mind the performance, feel the points.  Anything less than a scruffy win and this game would have been met with trepidation and yet another glance over the shoulder but that’s all gone now.  “Bring. It. On.” is the subtext.  Bigger they come, harder they fall.  

It helps that the opening half has been extraordinary.  Furious, aggressive, wild, merciless and all but unprecedented. And having seen our lead stolen by a fabulous finish from the remarkable Summerville… well.  This goal is…  perhaps one of the goals of our season – though the number of times that Dennis has held on to the ball too long and f***ed it up on previous occasions rather takes the edge off that perhaps.

But it’s undoubtedly the moment of the season so far.  A prize sealed, perhaps, by the ferocious challenge by Dennis on Cooper that featured in the build up, a great big “f*** off, pal” (of which more below) which already had everyone’s adrenaline going such that when the ball was planted past Meslier a primal scream followed.  Just NOISE.  By half time, my voice was gone.

3- Come Monday night, everything might have changed.  Come Monday night we might have travelled up to the Hawthorns, haunted as it is by the ghosts of Bob Taylor and Lee Hughes and drubbings past, and been thoroughly undone.  Perhaps they’ll have watched this video and thought “right… we do this, and this and a bit of that” and unpeeled Tom Cleverley’s new dawn like a banana.

Until then, Tom Cleverley (with nods to Kavaja, Lathrope, Gilligan) is a football genius, so let’s enjoy the heck out of it.  So much of what had changed just seemed so utterly sensible.  Like… putting players in positions where they can do things they’re good at, enlightened, modern, namby-pamby thinking that it was – and often in places that Leeds didn’t expect them at all.  So you have Vakoun Bayo as a wonderful, hurtly, pain in the arse, underneath every long clearance forward and not particularly having to hold the ball up because suddenly he’s one of a two and has Emmanuel Dennis, spiky and venomous in his own right, prowling around next to him.  You have Tom Dele-Bashiru as a sort of human protractor, popping up like whack-a-mole to create an angle, quick-pass, twist into space.  Or maybe create an angle, twist into space, quick pass if he’s feeling cheeky. He’s a critical cog.

Jamal Lewis in particular benefits from being pushed forward to wing-back and spends the game galloping down the left flank, a cute line in outward-curling lobbed passes from Porteous into his path a particular highlight.  Ryan Andrews, one suspects, will similarly enjoy his new liberty once he doesn’t have Crysencio Summerville to worry about.

Behind them, Dan Bachmann is now protected by three centre-halves, who elaborate on the themes suggested at Birmingham by snapping the ball along the now shorter distances between them much more quickly than we’re used to seeing it swing across the back…  but also by allowing themselves be bloody centre-halves now and again.  How much has Mattie Pollock in particular been desperate to be allowed to be a defender?  He, Sierralta and Porteous clear things that need clearing, as far as they can clear them.  They head things that need heading.  They shout at things that need shouting at.

And, yes, they kick things that need kicking.

4- Because the other attractive characteristic of the performance is an overdue level of violence.

Heaven knows there are some big bastards in our team, but with very few (if notable) exceptions – that’s you, Ryan Porteous – you wouldn’t have known it for much of a season in which we’ve been too supine too often.  Patience is, I suppose, a virtue but there comes a point where one really has to lose one’s rag and start demanding things as everyone who has ever parented a teenager will tell you.

And this is the most impatient performance we’ve seen for a very long time.  But…. disciplined with it.  For while Dennis and Bayo are hurtling around, Dennis back in the Tasmanian Devil form that characterised his better performance two seasons ago, and as a team we’re chasing down any whiff of controlled possession in the Leeds half our defending is much cuter…  standing players up, not jumping in, not overcommitting.  Jockeying, hassling, demanding. “Come on, then!”.  And then, when you see the whites of their eyes, kicking them up the arse.

Meanwhile in midfield, Edo Kayembe is rumbling around like the heavyweight unit he always should have been, ploughing through tackles rather than around them  Even Yáser Asprilla is doing his bit, seemingly tasked in the second half with being the irritant that cuts of Joe Rodon’s surges forward at the knees… the Welsh defender had followed an inhuman challenge to deny us a 2-0 lead with a surge through midfield to instigate the move for the equaliser, then caused havoc with a similar run later in the half but was given short shrift after the break.

Leeds don’t like it.  At all.  Summerville reacts early to being bullied out of possession by shoving his adversary two handed – with a more demonstrably insecure referee all sorts of cards could have been thrown around but, implausibly, we see none at all.  Dan James spends more time rolling around on the floor than not.  Patrick Bamford earns every inch of the derision he receives from Daughter 2 for flopping around inconsequentially for ninety plus minutes, waving his arms in the air.  Late in the game sub Jaydon Anthony channels all of his side’s peevish frustration into a snide rake of his studs down Porteous’ shins as the pair back away from a throw in at the Rookery end before stumbling backwards over his enraged adversary.  The ensuing handbags are quickly disposed of before Porteous earns the second biggest cheer of the afternoon when Anthony sits up in front of him on the GT stand touchline like a bouncing ball asking for a half-volley on the edge of the area and he launches his adversary into the hoardings.  Ludicrously, neither protagonist earned a card for either incident.

You’d have thought that Leeds, a team whose reputation was built on sharp edges and hailing from a City with similar character, would indulge in less pearl-clutching than most in response to this but seemingly not.  Seems that self-awareness is in low supply in West Yorkshire. Bless.  Tiny violins out all round, I think.

5- No, we didn’t win the game.  Noticed that.  Detail.

Having successfully prolonged our ferocity into the second half and kept a firm grip on the initiative, things changed when Emmanuel Dennis went off, ostensibly to protect a groin injury that already looks vastly less of a problem than it did at Birmingham.  It’s an expensive change to have to make, since Ismaël Koné never quite tuned into the inensity of the game.

Vakoun Bayo, meanwhile, was dead on his feet by midway through the half;  somehow he made it to the 89th minute but he wasn’t not the only one to slow down as the half progressed.  Leeds had most of the possession for the final quarter of the game and for all that we were the better side of the ninety this could have been a loss and a very different feel in the end. Dan Bachmann in particular, with a couple of fine stops not least from Anthony in the dying embers, saw us through as Leeds compensated for their lack of penetration with a bloody-minded perseverance that earned them a point but didn’t burgle them all three. 

Nonetheless.  Given a fairly feeble haul against the league’s strongest teams this season, a point from a side who had been 13-1-0 for the calendar year and hadn’t conceded from open play over the same period (let alone twice) is not to be sniffed at.  

Tom’s commitment was to get us looking forward to next season.  Much more of this and we’ll all be getting quite carried away.

See you at the Hawthorns.

Yooorns.

Bachmann 5, Andrews 3, *Lewis 5*, Pollock 4, Sierralta 4, Porteous 5, Dele-Bashiru 5, Kayembe 4, Asprilla 4, Bayo 4, Dennis 4

Subs: Koné (for Dennis, 58) 3, Ince (for Asprilla, 80) NA, Rajović (for Bayo, 89) NA, Martins, Grieves, Chakvetadze, Livermore, Morris, Hamer