I wrote in midweek that Leeds United’s win at Middlesbrough is best forgotten, or at least not widely advertised. One of those away wins that the larger world of Leeds fans, football fans and beyond don’t need to know in detail. Beyond the final score and a few adjustments to the league table, the game had little to offer.

A few days later and a few miles down the coast, sunshine blessed the Peacocks’ win over Hull City, or was it the other way round, Leeds United lifting the Humber’s gloom? Here was all the football that the game on Teesside did not enjoy, most of it in a second half that, rather than suppressed, should be repeated primetime viewing, targeted towards anyone who doubts what Marcelo Bielsa has brought to Leeds last season and this, and to football in the last thirty years.

Leeds United’s failures and fumbles, the way they fall apart, have defined the club since the Don Revie era. That’s not about anyone else, it’s about who we are and how we are. You can’t mention Paris or the Parc des Princes to a Leeds fan without stirring bitter memories of defeat by Bayern Munich and their referee in 1975; but how often does Loftus Road remind us of the time 7,000 Leeds fans travelled there to celebrate the same team’s championship in 1974?

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It’s an affliction that can seem like it’s holding Leeds sides back, until the scoreline reads 4-0 in their favour and the delighted faces of the players betray that they still can’t believe how good they are at football. Mateusz Klich said in his post-match interview that he’d been tired near the end of the game, but we’d watched him pressing Hull’s defenders as if he could run another thirteen kilometres and hardly feel a thing. Marcelo Bielsa trains players to discover limits they didn’t know they had, and sometimes the players seem surprised that their legs haven’t given out and they’re still running, that they can score goals as beautiful as any at Champions League or international level. Surprised and delighted.

After two seasons of this the element of surprise should have gone, but Leeds have been so engrossed in their fight against their own instinct to fail that the freedom they enjoyed in the second half against Hull has been rarely sighted. The first half was more typical: good but not great, in circumstances that were more difficult than they needed to be.

In the fourth minute Pablo Hernandez swung a pass from the wing to Luke Ayling, who was feeling lucky and whose feeling was right, his shot spinning off Callum Elder and beyond Hull’s keeper, George Long. If his chicken dance celebration had been followed by another goal, when Hernandez whacked a shot off the crossbar a few minutes later, Leeds might have risen above Hull much sooner. Instead Leeds vexed Bielsa, who moved his players around to deal with Hull’s front three until he could get them in at half-time for a proper reassessment.

A goal in the second minute of the second half gave Leeds the control they needed. From Hull’s corner kick, Illan Meslier put Leeds into a counter-attack; Pat Bamford made a good run to the near post but was stumbling to the floor when Jackie Harrison’s cross went over his head; Helder Costa collected the ball on the far side and Hull’s defenders did nothing to stop him sliding a pass through for Hernandez, or to stop Hernandez hitting the far corner with his shot.

With a margin Leeds became playful, like a doberman with a bag of peas. Harrison and Mateusz Klich combined one touch passes and a backheel to give the ball to Costa in the box; he swayed to create space but his shot was saved. Then Harrison squared to Klich who shot from the edge of the area; Long dived to push it wide. Then the corner was taken short to Harrison, who strolled inside and hit a powerful shot off the far post. Then Costa dribbled in the same area and shot low just wide of the other post. Then a corner went over everyone but Harrison got the ball, dribbled around and between three defenders, and his good shot was saved. Then Hernandez chipped over a penalty area full of players to Costa, who was celebrating his firm half-volley’s path into the net before it was firmly saved.

That all happened within about fifteen minutes and, if you’ve not watched many teams lately that aren’t Leeds United, you should be aware that this isn’t normal. Kiko Casilla’s absence and Illan Meslier’s debut had been the plot to watch; George Long, in Hull’s goal, became the story. Meslier didn’t have much to do on his debut; we’re still waiting for The FA to tell us what Casilla has done.

The tale of Leeds United’s day was told by the forwards, becoming folkloric after Tyler Roberts replaced Pat Bamford as the striker. It was nothing new that, in the list of chances and efforts on goal, Bamford was not seen, his work being to run, harass and distract so that others might score and, one more confident day, he might join in. Roberts, whose bad luck with injuries has kept him from joining in enough since his move from West Bromwich Albion in January 2018, put in the Bamford yards but threatened to score, too.

His first should have come when Hull struck a free-kick into Leeds United’s wall, and the three players in that wall led the counter-attack — Roberts to Harrison to Costa to Harrison, who ran with the ball down the left as the other two and Hernandez ran into the penalty, and was furious with himself for letting his cross to Roberts, and a certain goal, be blocked.

It would have been a classic, but Leeds only had to wait three minutes for one. Again Hull were attacking; Kalvin Phillips and Harrison stopping all that in the corner, Harrison winning the ball, Stuart Dallas flicking it back to him down the line, the pass going inside to Roberts who turned and ran to halfway and switched to Costa on the right. He stopped Hull’s defenders in their tracks with a pass behind them, across the penalty area to Klich on the left; his layoff invited either Dallas or Roberts to shoot, convening just inside the box, and as Tyler Roberts is a striker, he made sure he was the one to strike.

Roberts’ second was simple by comparison, and also demonstrated a difference from Bamford’s recent style. Bamford is often on a defender’s shoulder, watching and waiting as the ball goes to the wing. Roberts was on a shoulder as soon as Phillips and Hernandez won the ball and gave it to Klich in midfield, but he didn’t let it go out wide. He pointed behind his marker and into the penalty area, giving Klich the irresistible idea for a graceful chip over Matthew Pennington. Roberts, diving in control of his destiny, headed the ball around the goalkeeper and into the net, just like he planned.

There was poetry everywhere; the third goal has been replayed at least 257,600 times on one tweeted video of exuberant Spanish language commentary, and I suspect it’s only a matter of time before an earlier edition of that goal is produced, a step-by-step pre-play scored by some previous Bielsa team at some previous Bielsa time.

For the romantics among us, though, a young Welsh international wearing Leeds United’s number 11 shirt forcing in the last goal of a 4-0 rout of Yorkshire rivals near the end of a Second Division promotion chase takes us back thirty years to Gary Speed, getting one himself son to crown United’s demolition of their red and white striped rivals from Sheffield. There were different circumstances: Sheffield United were vying with Leeds for the title, not sliding to relegation like Hull, and the game was later in the season. But the injection of belief was the same, inspired by a player — like Roberts, like Meslier — only just becoming present in the first team.

If you’re listening for those echos, train your ear towards another part of Yorkshire, because in 1990 a dreadful defeat at Elland Road to a lowly Barnsley side still stood between Leeds and the First Division. Leeds have several similar fixtures ahead, the game with Barnsley looking almost eerie.

But when Leeds United play like this they have endless possibilities. A week ago Leeds had one striker, and not many goals from him for a while; when Jean-Kevin Augustin is fit that number nine position will be fought over by three. And but for George Long and the frame of his goal, this 4-0 win could have been 10-0. It sounds fanciful and arrogant, but then you look at Mateusz Klich, tired, playing better than supposedly better players do at full strength. I’m not sure he and the rest of the team always believe it either, but winning 10-0 would have been easy for them this weekend. If that’s possible, what else is? ◉

(Read Moscowhite’s new book: 100 Years of Leeds United, 1919-2019.)

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(photo by Lee Brown)