Gelhardt’s moment arrives (again)
There have been a few occasions this season we have described as the moment we all knew was coming for Joe Gelhardt, but it transpires they were all cheap imitations of what befell Sunday.
There was the dribble for the penalty Leeds United scored late on at home to Wolverhampton Wanderers, then there was his first senior goal, at Chelsea.
They were the moments we felt summed up the under-23 star’s arrival into the first-team picture after watching him flourish at that lower level for so long.
Rescuing one of the club’s most important victories in years at the death, having watched abject opposition equalise in what already felt like last the minute, has to be the defining image of his breakthrough season.
Who knows what else he may go on to achieve in the final nine games of the campaign, but Jesse Marsch summed up the way everyone felt when he said he will remember that goal on his deathbed in the decades ahead of him.
An unforgettable moment and one which was so special, it was almost worth the pain, agony and misery of Norwich City’s initial equaliser.
The teenager has been waiting so patiently to add to his tally of starts, watching as the team stumbled through its worst spell of form in years, but sitting tight and doing what he can from the bench.
Gelhardt may only be 5ft 9in, but he timed his spring to perfection in beating 6ft 1in Ben Gibson to the flight of the ball, which crucially released Raphinha into space.
The striker then ensured he was in the right place at the right time to smash home possibly the most important goal in the club's history since Pablo Hernandez’s winner at Swansea City.
Bamford is transformative
It may have only been 45 minutes, two shots, 12 touches and seven passes, but Patrick Bamford immediately showed everyone inside Elland Road what Leeds have been missing this season.
Anything more than 10 minutes was considered a risk for the England international just eight days earlier, so to see him making his first start in nearly six months was a touch surprising on Sunday.
It was a risk worth taking, it seems. Assuming there are no adverse reactions from his body between now and Friday’s trip to Molineux, that was a half everyone connected with Leeds has waited a long time to see.
Bamford brought presence, he was a focal point, he pinned defenders, he brought the ball in, made it stick and fed his team-mates.
We have watched players playing out of position as the side’s striker so long now it’s been easy to forget just how effective the right runs off the ball can be.
Bamford was able to pull the defenders away from the rest of the side. He created angles which drew passes from his team-mates that asked questions and unlocked doors.
There was the missed one vs one with Tim Krul, which looked baffling on the replays, but generally, this was a transformative presence in attack for Leeds.
Norwich were woeful, but the impact Bamford made, with so much rust still in his legs, was hugely promising for the weeks ahead.
Calming it down
One of the tenets of Marcelo Bielsa’s philosophy was ensuring no time was ever wasted on the field.
By being the fittest team in the division, Bielsa’s side looked to take throw-ins as quickly as possible, distribute the ball from the back as quickly as possible and almost look to catch the opposition off-guard.
The con of that approach was the basketball nature some matches developed. While Leeds would throw as many bodies as possible into attack, the lack of control could see them countered with a lot of bodies out of position.
On more than one occasion during Sunday’s game, you could see Marsch and his players calling for calm, for a slowing in the speed, a pause in Illan Meslier’s distribution or a longer wait for Luke Ayling to walk over for a throw-in.
Addressing that calming of the pace, Marsch said: “Well, I could see there's this desire to attack and go forward and be aggressive and that's good, but we also have to, I think, understand what the game is giving us and then understand how to use what the opponent's giving us to figure out how to control the match the way we want to control it.
“Certainly, there was a phase in the middle of the first half for me, where maybe we can make a quality action in the last third to find the second goal, but when we don't [it] leads to an open field and a transition in the other way.
“We want to prevent that, we want to have more control of the match so it doesn't get so open, so we don't have to sprint and run the entire match, that we do in phases and we understand the rhythm of what we want the game to look like.
“So, we're still developing that and we'll keep working on the tactical ideas of how that works.”
Forshaw and Klich provide the control
Two of the finest operators on the field on Sunday could be found in the middle of the park wearing white.
Adam Forshaw has been one of the stories of the season while Mateusz Klich’s form has been up and down for a long period now.
In the first two matches of Marsch’s tenure, with Robin Koch playing in the centre with them on different occasions, it did not work too well in finding control for the side.
Only Rodrigo delivered a better passing accuracy than the two midfielders, while Forshaw, in particular, found great success with his longer-range passing out from deep positions.
Klich picked two key passes which led to shooting opportunities, but it was the pair’s defensive statistics which stood out.
Only Luke Ayling (six) completed more tackles than the five apiece Forshaw and Klich delivered in stopping Norwich attacks.
Forshaw read the game brilliantly and seemed to anticipate just about anything Norwich were trying to build. He would sweep up danger and get Leeds moving back in the right direction time and time again.
The hope is they now cement their partnership as the double pivot in this side until Kalvin Phillips proves his fitness.
Belief returns just as it felt like it was gone for good
The rot has been stopped, for now. After six consecutive defeats, seven defeats in eight, an eight-match winless run and a head coach sacking, Leeds can finally add three points to their threadbare tally.
Coming into this week, four points was seen as the bare minimum this team needed to keep their noses clean in this Premier League relegation scrap.
Based on the way the world looked as Kenny McLean wheeled away in injury time, three points from six looks infinitely more appetising than one from six.
The work is not done, as Marsch importantly stated, this is just a step in the right direction. This does not make Leeds safe, it merely means they are in the fight.
The confidence and belief one win can do, and in such a manner, will only buoy spirits in all parties as they look to see what Marsch can do on Friday night in the West Midlands.
The American needed this win just as much as the club. The longer the wait for a win went on, the less authority he would have in these press conferences, where he has spoken so philosophically and confidently about projects and topics.
There is finally something to cling onto now and reason to believe this system, with Bamford at the head, Gelhardt in reserve, Raphinha and Rodrigo renewed, plus Phillips and Liam Cooper returning, can deliver the points needed to pull away.
