Nobody was expecting Leeds United Women to be doing this well since they were left in the lurch by manager Rick Passmoor after the opening day. Without a permanent man with a plan, the Whites won four from their first four, their best start to a season since they got their badge back in 2017.

Poached by a Women’s Super League side who have enjoyed unbroken support from West Ham United since 1991, Passmoor wasn’t the only one to make a break for greener grass over the summer. Few players have given more of their playing careers to Leeds United than Catherine Hamill, but after seasons of service to the ambition of playing in the league above with her girlhood club came to nothing, she moved to AFC Fylde, who are already there.

Another face of the team United are missing this season is Bridie Hannon, Hamill’s long-term centre back partner who will be chipping in on LUTV commentary as she takes a season out from playing.

You’d think that losing the heart of a side would throw a team off their stroke, but four from four is title winning form, not the output of a team in flux.

Jess Rousseau, for one, looks unbothered by the changes. At York City on Wednesday, she looked in no mood to give up the no.9 shirt as she sniffed out the hosts’ defensive frailties and calmly finished her fourth and fifth goals of a season that is still quite new. While a new defence tunes up after a summer of comings and goings at one end, the Whites’ attack is only stronger and more familiar, as the front three who closed out last season, Jess Rousseau, Abbie Brown and Macy Ellis, are already well-acquainted.

Recent history kept Laura Bartup dancing between cones in a bib on the sidelines at York. She’s got a few Leeds United golden boots in the cabinet, but after returning to the side from Hull City this summer, she might have to wait for her next one. Coming on in the second half, Bartup didn’t have much of a chance to open her account. By then it was 3-0, United had spent a long time being brilliant, and they were giving York their turn.

The Hamill-Hannon hole has pushed marauding full back Olivia Smart into a central defence partnership with able teenager Izzy Elliot, flanked by new signings Harriet Jakeman and Charlyann Pizzarello.

On Wednesday, the new defensive set up were five minutes away from their first clean sheet of the season when Smart’s itinerant urge pulled her out of position for Nicola Brown’s consolation strike. It was the third goal Leeds had conceded in the final ten minutes in as many games, telling you this fresh quartet are most but not all of the way there.

It was much earlier in the game against Middlesbrough on Sunday that United surrendered their clean sheet in the name of not paying attention.

Stationed at the far post for a corner on her full league debut, Emily Sykes could neither stop the ball going in nor get out of the way to let keeper Carrie Simpson do it for her. But Eve Packham would have had a harder time putting it there if anyone had interrupted her casual back post run.

Packham is one of five players who started against Leeds on Sunday who were part of Newcastle United’s title-winning squad last season. Freshly affiliated with the Championship side, Boro have been given a huge investment boost and added no fewer than thirteen players to their books, taking Rachel Hindle from Leeds and scavenging the Newcastle United squad after the Magpies’ professionalisation forced some excellent players out.

Newcastle perfected the model of attracting players and investing their way out of the league, and now their north-eastern neighbours are doing as much as they can to emulate their success. But Boro’s slow start to the season, featuring heavy away defeats to Huddersfield Town and Hull City, shows that it’s not just about who you’ve got but what you do with them.

Leeds learned the same on Sunday. By the time Boro visited Leeds at the Bannister Prentice stadium, things were coming together for them just as United were being forced to start over. After Macy Ellis and front-three stand-in Paige Williams both suffered injuries at York, Bartup was handed her first start since returning to the club. For years, Bartup in a Leeds shirt has equalled goals, but no amount of experience can create instant chemistry when thrown into an attacking line who’ve been bopping for months.

“Macy and Paige have been absolutely brilliant the last couple of weeks, have both been getting the goals and assisting the goals,” said Rebekah Bass, who featured on the bench for the first time since suffering a significant knee injury in January. “We’ve got the players on the bench who can do the job, but it’s the electricity that you get off both of them. So we did miss them and we will do.”

Boro did everything they could to make Leeds feel that absence, abandoning brilliance for tightening up after taking the lead, but their solid defending didn’t scare United off. In injury time, United forced three corners before Bartup and Brown combined to create one last chance for Rousseau. The three were clicking in the dying seconds but ‘keeper Laura Wareham made sure they had nothing to show for it. Brown urgently scrambled for the spilled ball but slipped, leaving Danielle Whitham and Harriet Jakeman vexed, with all the space to shoot but none of the ball.

In the midst of changes out of their control, Bass is pleased to see this United side taking one adjustment into their own hands.

“In the last ten minutes, we pushed and we pushed and we pushed,” Bass said. “Last season, I don’t think we’d have done that. I don’t think we’d have had the desire to actually get into those positions. Massive credit to the girls and to the coaching staff, pushing them on to do that.” ⬢