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Illan Meslier, conceder of a division high 68 goals in this campaign, is and has been for some time my player of the season. That total would have been even higher but for him pulling off at least one incredible save in it-feels-like every match. In a season without much joy, he’s livened things up on the regular with one athletic, reflexive feat or another, making me glad I was watching the game to see that moment no matter what the score. He is, in our six yard box, what we want Raphinha to be on the wing. Even against Southampton, when maybe his distribution invited pressure, and perhaps he could have done more with his hand on James Ward-Prowse’s free-kick, he managed to get down low one tiny instant after Che Adams aimed a close range shot at the last bit of goal inside the post, and block what should have been a certain equaliser. Watch it again, here:
It’s at 1:42 on that video, but look out for the longer edits, because the replay you want is a slo-mo over Adams’ shoulder, when we’re taken almost frame by frame from the kick to the stop. Fine, there are other parts of his game that need work. The same is true of many goalkeepers. How many are doing stuff like this every week?
And because I’m in a charitable mood, let’s acknowledge that he got closer to Ward-Prowse’s free-kick than most do. Jesse Marsch, after the match, said teeing up Ward-Prowse and his set-piece prowess on the edge of the area is “like a penalty, for him,” and he had a good chuckle at that one. “I went and sat with the guys on the bench and I just said, well, we need a little luck right now. And we didn’t have it.”
Overall Marsch was not “overly satisfied” but was okay with a game he said was, as predicted, “A real intensive match, about second balls, about duels … it was often quite ugly.” I enjoyed his neck rotations as he listed the dreary elements of Southampton’s style:
“When you have to deal with a lot of set-pieces and a lot of long throw-ins, the pressure can come a little bit more and more. But I think our team is getting clearer and clearer, playing better and better, the confidence is better, so overall I’m okay with the point, but more so with the performance.”
He brought this theme back in the press conference, claiming that points are actually more or less irrelevant, although those of us with an eye on the league table would dispute this:
Was today a point gained or two lost?
I don’t look at it either way, I look at it again, as a further development of the team and a good performance. And I think a fair result. I think it’s a pretty fair result. And again, what I’m most pleased about is, the fact that the group looked clearer. I could be calmer on the bench, because I knew that they had things under control, because they’re understanding more and more what we want the game to be.
He had a list, too, of exactly what Leeds did better:
“Best counter pressing game for us by far. Good in pressing moments. With the ball I thought in build up phases against a team that likes to press we still found a lot of solutions and now we’re starting to understand a little bit more what we want rotations to look like. And the positional discipline on the pitch at all phases of the match, including set pieces is getting better and better.”
And a few words on calmness, in the midst of a deliberately intense style of play. He says it would be easier to be calm if Elland Road wasn’t so boisterously demanding:
“We have a term we call 100 to 70. And so it means that in certain moments, we want them to slow down a little bit, and not always physically but just in their heads, with the ball, have a little bit more poise and control with how to put together the next play. When we play here, the fans don’t want to see 100 to 70. They want to see 100 to 150. You can see when when Illan catches the ball, the fans want him to play immediately. And so, you know, I’m learning more and more about our fans every match, and I’m enjoying it in the process.”
…but he also sorta wishes we’d wise up to it, I think; this is the second time Marsch has talked about his style not meshing with the expectations of the fans. After the Norwich game, he was saying:
“They’ll get to understand more and more what the tactics behind what we’re trying to do are and the right kind of cheering to make to help the team.”
Over on LUTV, talking to Bryn Law, Marsch repeated his line about not worrying about the points total, because he’s concentrating on improving the players and having a nice time with them:
“I’m focused on helping the guys grow, and develop, and understand more and more every day, and the work ethic and the concentration and the intelligence and the commitment in the group is the best I’ve seen. So, I’m thankful to be here, I told them again after the game that I am happy to be their coach and we’re having fun together. So, we’re going to keep pushing, we’re going to keep trying to get better every day, and that will help us get to the promised land.”
Um, aren’t we already in the promised land? Don’t sweat about another promised land, Jesse, this one will do us fine! Just keep us in this one, honestly that’s okay!
There was one other thing — well, actually there were loads of other things, from Joffy Gelhardt’s (hopefully) false-positive Covid test to USA and England being drawn together at the World Cup — but the one we need to deal with is the last substitution, when Pascal Struijk replaced Luke Ayling, who had just gone hobbling up the wing injured probably faster than I’ve ever run healthy. After Ayling came off, Marsch turned and started shouting at his bench, because he’d thought Liam Cooper was coming off:
“I think somehow there was a mix-up with the staff where they thought because Luke had a little situation where he had to come out for a second, that that might mean that was the sub that we wanted to make.”
Which still doesn’t feel like the full story, because Sam Greenwood was stripped and ready to come on before they changed their minds to Struijk for Cooper and accidentally took off Ayling, but whatever, paperwork is hard.
Marsch had a possibly too nice post-match embrace and laugh and joke around with Ralph Hasenhuttl, who confirmed after the game that he came to Elland Road to spoil the match:
“It was an intense way of playing football, we knew this. It doesn’t look always good because it’s very hectic but it’s tough to play here with the atmosphere and with the pressing, so we tried to make a point of not playing in our own half, only playing in their half.
“Then it sometimes ends up in Ping-Pong but that is okay, not always nice to watch but in the end I think we had the bigger chances today and could definitely have won this game.
“We will take a point but int the end when you’re one down after 30 minutes, it’s not so easy to come back here. The atmosphere was good and we were resistant and this is good.”
There’s no surer way of knowing the Bielsa era is over the opposition managers calling our match ping-pong instead of basketball. A sad day.
James Ward-Prowse was also talking up our atmosphere, after telling us about the free-kick he scored from, “It’s probably the one position that if I could put the ball down to hit it would be around there.” Yes, we saw that, thank you James.
“I’m pleased with the free-kick on a personal level. But more importantly I think it was a good point away from home. To come here to a really hostile environment, the fans are incredible, they make a really tough atmosphere for us to play in but we go through that initial period and we stuck at it and thankful to come away with a good point.”
He also confessed that Southampton’s way of dealing with the atmosphere was not to play, but to turn themselves into the sort of team they would hate to play against:
“I think [Leeds] are very similar to us and it’s about not giving them the opportunities that we like as a team when we’re against the ball. We had to play a little differently today, a little more direct and play for the second balls and I think we did that well. It’s a tough place to come but at the end I think we’ll look back and think it was a good point.”
Two big gains for us today were the subs mix-up meaning Liam Cooper playing the full match even if he shouldn’t have, and Kalvin Phillips coming back for the last 25 minutes. Of course he was also straight back on the post-match circuit, brightening up the worldwide Premier League feeds, although he sounded about as miffed not to get any stoppage time fireworks or just, you know, three points as the rest of us, saying “It was a good point” with a heavy sigh. Absolutely bless him for this assessment of his comeback: “We’ve won two in the last games, and as soon as I come back we draw.”
“I didn’t really do much, but it was just nice to be back on the pitch, especially at home … We had most of the possession, we were the better team throughout the game, but a touch of quality from Ward-Prowse…”
This is one of the awkward things about Kalvin’s profile now, he has to say nice things about his England teammates whether he wants to or not, so we’ll cut past that part. Let’s go straight to him wanting a penalty instead:
“I think the challenge at the end in the penalty box [on Gelhardt], I think it was a penalty. I watched it back in the changing room, I don’t know how he’s not give a penalty. But we’re not one to moan and we’re not one to dwell on it.”
He was asked one last question, about the World Cup draw, but I thought he was going to be asked to address something else — these shoes:
— No Context Prem (@NoContextEPL) April 2, 2022
I mean I also wanted to know about the coat but it’s the shoes that went viral. It turns out these shoes are from the future — part of the Loewe autumn/winter 2022 ready to wear collection by designer Jonathan Anderson, as seen here or here or here, so they’re not even on sale yet. The coat, for the record, is also part of the new Loewe collection! How’s Kalvin getting all these garms so early? Let’s hope he didn’t also get this top, far too much red. From Anderson’s backstage comments, reported in Vogue, the theme of this collection is sort of pushing on through the absurdity of NFTs and the metaverse, “pushing things toward something that could be irrational” since nothing really makes sense anymore anywhere. No word on prices, although the cheapest Loewe trainers will run you £295, but by the time you can afford to wear impractical pre-release high fashion concept catwalk boots, you’ve probably long since stopped having to pay for them. ⬢
