Errors to sum up the current plight
Cliches are often scalded in football, but there’s a lot to be said for the warm, familiar comfort of keeping it tight for 20 minutes when you are staring relegation in the face. Leeds United could not have looked more like a club heading for the trapdoor if they had tried in the first 25 minutes.
“Let’s keep it tight for the first five minutes, fellas, no risks.”
“Right, we’re one down, but let’s keep it tight for the next five, okay?”
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“We might be two down, but one goal and we’re back in this. Let’s just keep it steady for the next 15 and get settled with all 11 men on the field. Nothing daft.”
Almost every relegation slide you have seen in recent years has had hallmarks of the opening 25 minutes at Emirates Stadium on Sunday. It felt like the latter days of Marcelo Bielsa’s reign when we became used to seeing all hope of positive outcomes extinguished within 20 minutes of kick-off.
Those errors, easy goals and that crass, two-footed tackle all belonged to the shakiness of February. It was a capitulation as everyone lost their heads at the same time.
It was a miracle Arsenal did not score more and put the tie well out of United’s reach. It is to the visitors’ credit they did ultimately steady the ship with a one-man disadvantage and even caused a few nervous glances in the home end through the second period.
That’s Ayling’s season done, more on the right-back situation later, and it finishes with a chapter he will be kicking himself for weeks on end, or even longer if the worst is confirmed in 13 days’ time. As soon as he committed backside to turf Ayling would have regretted it. That’s what 500 senior appearances are supposed to teach you.
There can be no doubt it was a challenge borne out of frustration for the situation the vice-captain found his side in. In what was the hardest of the final four games of the season, Ayling knew this was the start from hell and he malfunctioned.
A two-horse race?
At last, after all of the postponements, international breaks, fortnight-long pauses and games in hand, Leeds find themselves in the bottom three and staring down at the Championship in all its grotesque glory. If the pain of last weekend’s three-point swings to Burnley and Everton hurt, this official slide into 18th was a real gut-punch delivered all the more accurately by the door the Clarets pushed ajar with their own defeat on Saturday.
There was something viciously sinister in events at King Power Stadium too, which also kicked off at 2pm. Eddie Nketiah’s fifth-minute opener was followed by a sixth-minute Everton lead.
Arsenal’s 10th-minute second was softened by an 11th-minute Leicester City equaliser and then, bizarrely, just three minutes after Ayling’s red, another Everton goal in quick succession. The combination of those double-jabs at either end of the country really felt like the life was being knocked out of United’s survival bid.
As it is, Everton, still with a game in hand, finally have small daylight between themselves and the other two. The momentum and fixture list for Frank Lampard’s side puts them in the driving seat and leaves Leeds looking at the very simple permutation before them: better Burnley’s results between now and May 23.
Matches with Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur can be traded off as daunting big-six tasks neither side is expecting to take much from, leaving mid-table opposition for both. Burnley have to go to Villa Park within a fortnight of losing heavily to Steven Gerrard’s side before concluding the term at home to Newcastle United, a side with little to play for, but top-four form since the turn of the year.
Leeds are left with Brighton & Hove Albion at Elland Road before a first trip to Brentford’s new stadium on the final day. Only Liverpool and Manchester City have picked up more points across their last six than those two.
It’s not easy, but it’s a simple task and the Whites will play again before Burnley. Chelsea at Elland Road on Wednesday night is followed by the Clarets’ Spurs trip in Sunday’s early kick-off, two hours before Leeds host Brighton.
Bielsa to Marsch transition has stalled
The latest strand in the ongoing debate about Bielsa and Marsch is the few similarities between their tactical philosophies. United trumpeted the likeness in their tactics as one of the key reasons why the American was hired.
While pragmatism and the alarming league situation have been the keys emphasised by Marsch, it is becoming harder and harder to see how this transition was ever supposed to be smooth. It’s all well and good lining up Burnley’s fixtures to be shot at, but where’s the ammunition?
Leeds have not looked like a side capable of scoring goals since they were faced with the sorry excuse for a top-flight side at Vicarage Road last month. If they play anything close to Sunday’s level when Thomas Tuchel brings his wounded animals to West Yorkshire in midweek, they will do well to take a point from the FA Cup finalists.
From what were once pockets of promise, against Leicester, Norwich and Southampton for example, the team’s transition into Marschball, the gamble the club took, has stalled to the point of paralysis when they have the ball. What’s the plan? What are the team trying to achieve with the ball?
Arsenal began quickly and went after Leeds, making it uncomfortable for the visitors, but in those precious moments when they did take the ball they did not know what to do with it. Kalvin Phillips, normally so assertive and confident, was left to build triangles with Mateusz Klich and Raphinha from their own third, which went nowhere, or to launch the ball into the channels where the hosts gobbled up possession.
It’s hard to blame Marsch. It was never going to be easy arriving at the time he did, with the matches he had left and the personnel available to him.
This looks like what it is: a group of players at the back end of a wretched season wrecked by injuries left second-guessing every decision they make. Bielsa is on one shoulder and Marsch is on the other, while Granit Xhaka is smothering every inch of you in front of a 60,000-person crowd on global television.
The head coach has a monumental job on his hands with barely 75 hours between Arsenal and Chelsea to find answers to these questions.
Bate’s more to tell
If you’re looking for a silver lining, and who isn’t right now, then look no further than Marsch’s half-time substitution. Klich, removed for fear of a costly second yellow card, made way for 19-year-old Lewis Bate.
After one of those typical first years under Bielsa, as was, Bate is finishing the campaign with a spring in his step. Injury issues seem to have given way to a decent run of form with the under-23s and some promising training sessions, according to Marsch.
Nine days earlier, Bate had been at Emirates Stadium with Andrew Taylor’s side and lit up that evening match with his driving dribbles from deep and measured final deliveries into the box. He carried the ball well again in the capital on Sunday though, given the circumstances, it did not perhaps have the match-defining impact more neutral observers may have noticed.
“He's been training really well, he's been playing really well with the 23s,” said Marsch. “I have no doubts if we need Lewis at some point here in the next three matches he'll be ready to play and he'll perform like he did this afternoon.
“As soon as I saw Klichy had a yellow, and we didn't need another lost player in the process, then I was 100 per cent ready to put Lewis on the pitch and not surprised at all with his performance.”
Those comments stop some way short of tearing the shirt from the Pole’s back for the teenager on Wednesday night, but it’s an acknowledgement at least of the steps forward this former Chelsea prodigy has taken. Bate was one of those names so fatefully mentioned by Angus Kinnear in those January programme notes and, at last, there may be some first-team impact from him in these final few games.
The right-back conundrum
Ayling’s dismissal throws another spanner into the works, not only from a leadership point of view, but positionally too. Marsch did not have any immediate answers after the game when the right-back question was put to him, but he's getting a very good taste of the selection issues Bielsa was troubled with all season in this threadbare squad.
“We'll evaluate exactly what we need to do in the next three days, over the next three matches,” he said. “It does present us with a dilemma.
“We have Jamie Shackleton to play this position. We can play Raphinha, we can try a centre-back outside at the full-back position.
“We have some options, but we've got to figure out what's the best scenario to get us through the next three matches.”
Shackleton would be the most obvious candidate based on his use there under Bielsa, but Marsch may well want to go in another direction. Robin Koch went out there initially after Ayling’s exit, but Raphinha would settle there as part of a back five later.
In the interests of scoring goals, the idea of the team’s best attacking player being stationed at right wing-back does not seem especially wise.
