After another afternoon of anonymity, I turned to the lad beside me and asked, “Does Piroe actually do anything?” Thirty seconds later, he was tapping in at the back post to give Leeds the lead against Watford. The answer is yes, he does something. He does goals. Perhaps that’s all he does. Is that okay? Is it enough? Well, it’s what we paid Swansea more than £10m for, so it must be enough.
To my untrained eye, Joel Piroe appears to be a modern poacher who Daniel Farke has decided to play as a ‘10’ because it’s Leeds. We do things the Unbelievable Hard™ way here. Always have, always will. The only problem is that a lot of us have spent several years asking nicely for Leeds to be furnished with a proper goalscorer, and now that we have him, we’re not playing him where he’s ‘supposed’ to play.
Instead, we’ve created a role that is wholly new to football: the false poacher. It’s like a traditional goalhanger, but rather than creeping between defenders he’s playing neat little one-twos near the halfway line before gliding into the box to score. How does it work? Who knows. Football magic maybe.
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