It turns out I called this in May. May 2021, glorious May, March April and May, wonderful spring when Leeds won seven and drew three, spoiling fun for Super League splitters and Champions League aspirants, May when there was only one bad day: the 1st of May, in Brighton. Leeds lost 2-0 and were atrocious.

Even looking back at it, in the midst of the form when Manchester City and Spurs were beaten, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United held to draws, there’s no more solid explanation for that game or performance than the one I decided on at the time: Graham Potter, like Garry Monk and Wigan Athletic, holds a mad hex over Marcelo Bielsa. We could win the Premier League, I wrote, but Brighton will still beat us along the way. While every player and tactic was being torn to shreds online, I wrote that we’d have no problem beating Spurs in the next game: and we didn’t, winning 3-1 in fact, as if away from the pebbly coast Leeds were a completely different team. Flipping the fixtures this week doesn’t find a win over Spurs in our last game, but it was a completely different sort of show to this weekend’s episode. And we didn’t actually lose to Brighton this time, although I’m still not sure how.

We get a couple of these every season under Bielsa, and particularly in the promotion season, and I went and looked them up, too. Losing 2-0 at home to Sheffield Wednesday in January 2020, Leeds were booed off. Kalvin Phillips, trying to take his frustration out on the ball at full-time, couldn’t even do that right. Leeds had ground out an utterly miserable 0-0 at Hillsborough a few months earlier, only Bielsa’s second goalless draw in charge. At the start of February 2020, Wigan beat us again at home, and I snapped, imagining myself marching into Wetherby Costa, turning a few tables over and demanding to know, ‘Marcelo Bielsa, what the fuck was that?’

Looking back at these games I don’t know how far I can resist the idea of fate. I know it makes no sense, but Garry Monk has a 5-1 aggregate scoreline against Marcelo Bielsa, Wednesday in general were a problem, Wigan beat us twice at home, Bielsa’s players haven’t scored in three games against Graham Potter’s and Saturday’s point at Brighton is one more than we got from them last season. We’ve seemed fine against everybody else so let’s just go with ‘curse’. Or there could be a serious side to this. What do these opponents have about them that make Bielsa’s football so insipid? Or in Brighton’s case, where Leeds haven’t scored in six visits or won in eight, is there some element of the travel or hotel arrangements draining the players’ energy before they begin? Or it could actually just be the fates having their way, so tangling Leeds up in their threads that every trip to Brighton is a bust, every game against Manchester City giving us more of a chance.

We should probably look at the actual game against Brighton, a bit. Sorry. Raphinha and Rodrigo were back, but anonymous; Junior Firpo was back, but nobody could take more than a half of that; Kalvin Phillips went off with him at half-time, apparently not injured, just underwhelming. His switch to defence is being treated as a novelty by pundits who haven’t been paying attention: back in the Championship he would always drop between the centre-backs to form a three, and it’s being used now to deal with opposing managers playing the two-up-top gambit to force Leeds into extra centre-backs, because Phillips can switch from defence to midfield any old time, as he did midway through this first half. By that time Neal Maupay had wriggled free from his marking the way Harry Kane could never, but given a golden opportunity in front of an open goal he blasted the football over it. He did the same in the second half, too. Thank you Neal!

Tariq Lamptey was Brighton’s dangerous player, and Junior Firpo was United’s, for different but coincident reasons. After a late foul on Lamptey, Firpo got an early yellow card, and it’s probably a good job he couldn’t get closer to him after that because whenever he did he was dicing with a red. Then again, as Jackie Harrison was always having to run back with Lamptey because Firpo was completely lost, sending Junior off might not have made much difference to the left side. It can’t be easy to adjust to a new country, a new competition and a new way of playing between bouts of Covid and injuries. But it shouldn’t be as hard as Firpo was making it look.

In the second half Pascal Struijk took over from Phillips, Stuart Dallas moved to left-back in place of Firpo and Jamie Shackleton came on at right-back, and Bielsa described it as a half to build on, one we could be satisfied with. I suppose Tyler Roberts came on and had some shots but I’ve watched this game twice now and I do not feel satisfied. There were some better things in it, like those Roberts shots and one by Dallas, and a small feeling that the game was nickable in the last ten minutes. But Leeds never seemed to actually get better, Struijk toppling over as Albion dribbled around him, Shackleton trying to reprise Norwich’s equaliser from the other week with thoughtless passes towards Illan Meslier. The general absence of thought looked like one of Leeds’ main problems: they just weren’t thinking, they weren’t switched on. That, more than physical effort, was why Brighton’s players kept beating our defenders to loose balls, even in the penalty area, turning what should have been simple clearances into second chances that Meslier and the woodwork had to deal with. Brighton were awake. I don’t know about Leeds.

Another problem was the lack of creativity in attack, where Dan James played an hour as striker before Roberts took over, immediately improving things simply by being a striker. Until then James had been invisible, Harrison preoccupied helping Firpo, and Raphinha impossible to find no matter where Leeds tried passing from. He’s been combining well with Rodrigo in recent games, but without Raphinha on the ball needing his help, Rodrigo couldn’t find a way of influencing the game on his own. Maybe the half-time substitutions to sort out the defence restricted Bielsa’s options, but I found it odd that the attack didn’t get any of the same tinkering attention the back line got. After Roberts was on, Raphinha and James swapped wings, but that was as wild as things got. Hear me out here, but what about James on the wing, Rodrigo at no.9, Raphinha at no.10, even just for a little while, just to see? It doesn’t feel much more radical than playing James at centre-forward, and might get more out of Raphinha than leaving him fuming on the wing without a touch. It’s such an obvious way of getting our best player involved that the club’s graphics put Raphinha in the middle when the team was announced at Wolves, for what turned out to be James’ striking debut.

Then again, if Brighton is Brighton and nothing would have helped, sticking with the same plan made sense, as it will just as likely beat Crystal Palace and Brentford over the next week as not. For better or worse, Leeds have not radically changed since losing to Brighton in May, meaning non-performances like this can still easily happen, but the potential for the flip is still there: the rest of May was won 3-1, 4-0, 2-0 and 3-1. Those back to back matchwinning Firpo shows are ready in the bank. Maybe. Maybe we could be more confident if we’d scored more than two in a game this season, or won more than two games, or looked more like it than not. But it’s got to be in there somewhere still, hasn’t it?

Maybe it’s truest of all to point out how Brighton were booed off at the end of this game, despite being 8th and a point off European qualification. Nobody’s ever happy in the Premier League, especially not in Brighton, home or away. ⬢