KING POWER STADIUM — Creating chances that they wasted in increasingly intricate ways. Chaotic football in midfield, with and without the ball. Caught on the break to lose a match they should have won. Your final attacking substitute being injured two minutes after he came on.
To everyone who spent this week worried whether Jesse Marsch could fit in with English football, here was your answer: he clearly already has Leeds United in his blood.
As the full-time whistle blew, six different Leeds players slumped forward. They are used to this feeling.
After the game, Marsch marched onto the pitch and gathered his players together before they could walk to salute the away support; they would have to wait. The new manager wanted to form a huddle, presumably to tell them that if they perform this well until the end of the season, they will survive. And he’s right; everything but the goal.
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How on earth do you shift the principles of a dogmatic manager or even begin to decide which you have to keep through the limitations that short-term emergency ensure? How much difference can anyone make in a few training sessions? To what extent is Marsch being set up to fail? What will be the phrase that elements of the media pick up upon first to prove his status as an outsider? Marsch’s first days in this job provoked obvious questions and few answers.
If improving the defence is the first task, Marsch is at least in the slightly envious position that it couldn’t get worse. Last season they earned a reputation for rollercoaster football that regularly exposed a defensive frailty; they conceded 37 per cent of last season’s league goals in Bielsa’s final five matches in charge.
And they were far better organised on Saturday. It marked the first time since 27 November that they hadn’t conceded in the first half of an away game. They continued to pass around the back four but often looked long to release the pressure, a strategy that will surely work far better when Patrick Bamford is fully fit.
And they dominated the chances. Junior Firpo and Rodrigo shot high and wide with power in situations that demanded placement. A shot was blocked off the line. Jack Harrison forced an excellent save from Kasper Schmeichel via an outstretched foot. Some things don’t change; only Norwich have a worse conversion rate of shots to goals this season. If Leeds are now only going to concede in ones and twos rather than threes and fours, great. But that doesn’t help much if it takes you 15 shots to score a goal.
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Nor does it help when a simple lapse in concentration kills the mood. We are told that Marsch will move away from the man-marking system (they pressed more in packs against Leicester) but defenders will forever be punished if they don’t track runs. Luke Ayling was the guilty party, a simple give-and-go from Harvey Barnes the result.
Marsch’s first task as Leeds United manager is to try and keep them in the Premier League, but his job extends beyond the practical to the philosophical. To be an American coach in English football is to provoke laboured gags and established tropes and Marsch will not escape them if things go awry. Marsch is a product of Red Bull’s club network more than he is an acolyte of a North American coaching school, but that will be easily ignored. If carrying Leeds to potential Premier League salvation was not enough, he is carrying the reputation of an entire football culture on his shoulders.
Add to that the retained love for his predecessor – Leeds fans chanted Bielsa’s name repeatedly on Saturday and held up banners and flags of thanks – and Marsch is in an immensely awkward position. He has to change plenty but not too much to destroy what worked so well before. He must improve things that require intense coaching in a matter of days. He must connect with a squad and set of supporters despite knowing that, in an ideal world, none of them want him to be here.
None of this would be easy in isolation, let alone in combination. First impressions matter – Marsch passed that test. But when your club is desperate to stay in the Premier League, first results matter more. Marsch must make them harder, more resilient, more ruthless, more clinical and he must do it within the space of the next fortnight or it will be too late. Too late for Leeds and, in the eyes and minds of those who will seek to do him down, too late for his own reputation.
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