This game made me nostalgic for the days when being a football fan didn’t require watching so much of it.

We’re in an era of instant hyper-analysis, frame-by-frame replays from multiple angles, ten things you missed between the 31st and 39th minutes, but not every match is worth all that. Some are better left to the travelling diehards who welcome a trip to Teeside on a winter night in February, which was never the original point of soccer. Sometimes I think association football was a better game before the invention of floodlights. And trains.

I’ll allow the post-Marconi and Baird innovations to an extent (John Logie, not Ian), keeping in touch over the radio with one bud in the ear while sitting with the family, trying not to distract them from The Bill, until you judge it’s time to quickly turn over and catch the goals on the late local news. We’ve never been closer to football, but there are times when I miss that distance.

This game fell so far below the advertised standards of a vital game in pursuit of promotion to the best league in the world that it’s a useful addition to the library of warnings to people who don’t like football, not to let themselves be seduced by thrilling televisual orgies like last season’s Champions League semi-finals. Football isn’t always like that; it’s hardly ever like that. It’s normally like this, and unless you’ve developed immunity over years of practice, you’ll be disappointed.

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Only one team at the Riverside was pursuing promotion, although Middlesbrough seem bewildered that it’s not them. One of the most dangerous situations for a football club is realising too late that relegation is a real risk, and after defeats to Luton Town and Barnsley, that’s the thin chemical light dawning on Jonathan Woodgate and Robbie Keane. They have had to stop kidding themselves and their team has to stop playing and start trying not losing all the time. Their defender Ryan Shotton looks realistic. That might not be enough.

Woodgate promised a better performance from his team than when they lost 4-0 at Elland Road and arguably he got it; the scoreline was kinder, and the Peacocks were not given an easy night. Boro couldn’t afford to let Leeds play to their normal level, so their night was about dragging Leeds down to a more equal standard. Helped by a lenient and/or incompetent referee — check a penalty claim for handball against Stuart Dallas, a maybe, and one against Adam Clayton for tripping Jackie Harrison, another maybe — the game became a scrap.

How much of United’s entry into Boro’s scruffy scheme was due to Kalvin Phillips’ absence is worth asking. He was pictured beaming on the sidelines, not recovered yet from his kicked calf but making the lives of the Middlesbrough mascots better just by being there. Leeds could have used that smile, like a bag of Wilko’s tealights, in their midfield.

We can go to the numbers here: overall pass completion was steady compared to the Reading game, down from 83% to 79%, but passes into the middle of the pitch tell their own story, down from 87% to 69%. Forward passes dropped from 79% to 69%, and Leeds only switched play from wing to wing five times, compared to eight against Reading and Bristol City.

If we want to bring it down to the level of a player, we can: in his last full match, against Bristol City, Phillips completed 85% of his passes; in defence, Ben White completed 89% against both Bristol and Reading, hitting 50/56 and 40/45. In Phillips absence at Boro, Berardi lived near enough up to White’s numbers, completing 45 out of 55 passes — 82% — but White’s stat dropped to 63%, completing just twelve passes, compared to Kalvin’s usual 50.

All of which confirms what our eyes tell us when White is in midfield: Phillips is a special player in that position, and White is not. The thing to admire about this performance, then, from White and the rest of them, is that Leeds overcame that shortcoming, the forty missing passes to control midfield, and beat Boro at their own game.

Phillips’ absence was more visible than against Reading because those misplaced passes into midfield gave Middlesbrough the ball on halfway and left Leeds looking vulnerable to counter attacks. Both Berardi and Liam Cooper were excellent at stopping those, though, and a minute before half-time, Mateusz Klich intercepted a loose pass of Boro’s on halfway and countered in the other direction.

Klich slid the ball in front of Pat Bamford, and with defenders closing in, he chose safety and a square pass to set up Pablo Hernandez. He steadied and shot, beating the keeper but not the post, but Leeds rarely attack once at a time. Luke Ayling gathered the clearance and gave the ball back to Klich; a one-two with Hernandez put him through. Calm, determined and accurate, he shot low inside the far post.

Apply those adjectives to Bamford and this game could have finished 3-0. Breakfast time’s surreal message of support for Bamford from Jon Bon Jovi set the stage for Bambo to make this his night: after a brace, or even one goal, every reporter would have been clamouring for an interview, for the quote thanking Bon Jovi that would write the headlines for them. Instead Bamford headed Ayling’s cross straight at the keeper when he had time and space to place it, and when Ayling’s cut-back took a deflection off Shotton, it deceived Bamford into diverting the ball sideways, instead of into the net, from a couple of yards.

Leeds could have used those goals, because if we take the same adjectives and stick them on Marcus Tavernier, he puts his free shot inside the penalty area under Kiko Casilla’s crossbar, instead of smack against it. But the lack of finishes from Bamford has often masked the rest of the team’s failure to chip in with goals, so perhaps the way Ayling, Hernandez and Klich have contributed to the last three 1-0 wins will inspire Patrick to join in again, where Jon Bon Jovi couldn’t.

So, Leeds United lacked accuracy and control in midfield, wasted chances with woeful finishing, struggled to overcome an aggressive opponent, nearly lost the lead to a free shot against the woodwork, and had to run the ball into the corners at the end for ten minutes of anti-Bielsa football, while the away fans forgot his lectures on aesthetics and cheered; Jean-Kevin Augustin was missing injured, the third choice goalkeeper had to travel in case of injuries or sudden bans and new signing Ian Poveda was nowhere to be seen.

And Leeds United won 1-0 away, making a five-point gap above 3rd place, and this is what I mean about how sometimes it’s better to wait and find out about football rather than experience every godforsaken second of a 46 game season. It might sound like iffy nostalgia, but it’s how it was last time Leeds were in the Premier League. Check the result on Teletext, and confirm the placings on your league ladder poster on your bedroom wall. Sometimes it’s all you need to know. ◉

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

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(photo by Lee Brown)