What were Leeds United close to at Old Trafford, and how close were they? Playing a game of football involves taking on the day’s opponent but also history, so here’s what Leeds were up to, leading 2-0 at the start of the second half. 28th February 1981 was the last time Leeds won a league game at Old Trafford, 1-0 thanks to Brian Flynn’s goal. You have to go back to 9th February 1974 for the last time the Peacocks led there by two, Joe Jordan and Mick Jones scoring in a 2-0 win.

The present situation didn’t give Leeds much hope. The home team had won thirteen in a row at Old Trafford. The away team had just sacked their manager, let their owner tweet about a replacement being sorted, and let themselves be owned on Twitter by West Bromwich Albion. And yet, adversity suits Leeds United. That win in 1974 was the last of a 29 game unbeaten sequence from the start of the season that ultimately sealed a second league title, Leeds United arguably at their best ever. But it followed a summer when manager Don Revie almost left in frustration to work at Everton, after a season when Leeds finished only 3rd in Division One, lost the FA Cup final to Second Division Sunderland, and were robbed in the European Cup Winners’ Cup final by a referee who made sure AC Milan won. An ageing squad was being written off as finished. Instead, those players were putting on some of the best football of their lives, proving that whatever people said they were, that’s what they were not.

Frustrating as it might be to Leeds’ fans self-identification with glory, maybe this is our true default. Even when Don Revie made Leeds the best club side in the world, Leeds were underdogs. When Howard Wilkinson pulled off a Division One heist in 1992, Leeds were still outsiders with just weeks of the season left. Never forget Deportivo La Coruna’s glee when drawing the Leeds of David O’Leary and Eddie Gray in the Champions League, and the result at Elland Road: 3-0 to the weakest link.

At the end of this match at Old Trafford, Leeds’ modern players looked exhausted, frustrated and proud. They had let a famous win elude them, but those who have been around Leeds a while know we don’t get the nice things easily. They knew the value of what they had gained: a precious league point on a night when none were expected, renewed acquaintance with their real selves, and respect from their opponent that means anything could happen in the return game at Elland Road on Sunday. On Wednesday afternoon, it had felt like both games were only going one way.

The players had also, whether they desired this or not, delivered a demolishing blow to Jesse Marsch’s eleven months of work with them. Leeds Under-21s and former England Futsal coach Michael Skubala, his U21s assistant Paco Gallardo, and Marsch’s just arrived best mate Chris Armas, took a grip of this side in forty-eight intense hours and turned them into something that, if it’s not quite ready or capable of winning at Old Trafford, can handle what the rest of this season gives them.

This was what everybody expected Jesse Marsch to do when he was hired to replace Marcelo Bielsa. Before the game, Skubala said the team had been doing some good things under Marsch, so they would be keeping those, tweaking some of the other things, and not trying to change too much in case it confused the players. “Fundamentally,” he said, “we need to make sure that the players understand the match plan that we want to deliver.” That could have come from Marsch himself, if only he’d used the term ‘clarity’, but unlike what came from Marsch, it worked. Jesse Marsch’s first home game, against Aston Villa last March, was a night of creeping fear that a reverse Midas had overthrown Bielsa, and right to the end of his job Marsch complained that, in moments of ‘stress’, his players were reverting to ‘bad habits’ from the previous coach. Like his insistence that he was here to change the Leeds mentality about always doing things the hard way, Marsch never seemed to grasp that he was here to build upon something bigger than him, not tear it down to erect a Marsch Bull in its place.

Skubala, Gallardo and Armas have understood the task, and that’s probably why Armas has been kept on: as deeply versed as Marsch in the RB style, he could help continuity with the good that Marsch does leave — the energetic pressing, the commitment to tackling up the pitch, the fast starts that caught the home team cold after both kick-offs. But “twenty minutes of shape”, as Skubala put it, was enough to weld that to the organisational structure we were craving back before Bielsa was sacked. Leeds were 4-2-3-1 wi’ ball, 4-3-3 wi’ out ball, simple as that, and because this was easy for the players to understand, it was easy for them to commit to. In the absence of stress, there was discipline, and when stress returned at 2-2, there was still enough discipline to get the draw.

Wi’ ball, the array of attacking Peacocks were given their imaginations back. The ball was not being forced to the penalty spot every time. Players were thinking in possession, playing square, playing wide, cutting in, stretching the defence, making runs, keeping the ball, within a structure Marsch would recognise — the aim was still towards the middle of the pitch on the end line — but without the RB stopwatch dictating a shot in eight seconds, frantic impotence was replaced with, well, two goals. And before the other team scored any, too, for the first time since visiting Southampton back in August.

That Southampton game ended 2-2 as well, proving not everything has changed in Leeds since Sunday. We’re still relying on Wilf Gnonto, but what a bundle of talent to rely on, so who cares. His opening goal, after 55 seconds, looked far too good to be scored by a Leeds United player of February 2023, but I hadn’t seen the rest of the game yet. By the end it fitted in better. In the first minute, the way he received a one-two back from Pat Bamford, switched his speed down then up as he stroked the ball between defenders, and the early snapshot precision of his finish, all looked imported from some other team, a really good one. Leeds United are the team whose under-fire left-back gets subbed off dazed from a smack in the face off a Marcus Rashford shot, so that happened, after our other great skilful hope of the season, Luis Sinisterra, had already gone with a bad hamstring. The New Raphinha’s absence meant Crysencio Summerville was on the pitch to make the second goal, sent to the byline by swift attacking at the start of the second half, putting the ball in off Raphaël Varane’s leg.

Tyler Adams and Weston McKennie kept things feisty in midfield, Luke Ayling and sub left-back Junior Firpo stayed in the back line, and it’s odd to say Leeds stood up while letting their two goal lead fall, but true. They allowed too many crosses, and Rashford’s leap, hang and header were too good for the first goal. For the second, as players surged into the penalty area, Summerville and Ayling both lost control of Jadon Sancho and Illan Meslier couldn’t see the shot that went past him. It does Leeds credit that there wasn’t a third. Every player who made a mistake did more things well: Ayling was the boss of Alejandro Garnacho on the wing, Meslier produced his usual playlist of saves from good to ace. Max Wöber, who thoughtlessly gave a couple of chances away in the first half, cleared one off the line when Meslier was out of goal and grew stronger as the night grew longer. Asked afterwards how the home team got back into the game, Skubala chuckled ruefully. “They have quality,” he said, and it comes down to that when a team has won thirteen in a row and is 3rd in the Premier League. Against other teams Leeds could make more mistakes and win.

At this venue, against this opponent, even Leeds United fans were ready to shrug it off if their hopes ended in another loss on Wednesday night. That’s not defeatism, it’s realism, accounting for history since 1974, modern economic power, and contemporary events. Those are things that Jesse Marsch, through eleven months of confident speaking swore he would overcome. One point at Old Trafford made a point that he, and we, were wasting our time all that time, using the wrong tactics to fight the wrong battles. A key phrase of Angus Kinnear’s programme notes, introducing Jesse Marsch last year, said Marsch was coming earlier than planned as part of ‘the acceleration of the coaching transition’, post-Bielsa. Later than planned, Leeds might have finally made a start. ⬢