Whatever happened to Saturday night entertainment? Traditionally, every broadcaster would save its best family favourites for those primetime hours at the heart of the weekend. Leeds United and Brentford did not follow the Sky Sports script.
Viewers of BBC One’s The Weakest Link: Gladiators Special or even Channel 5’s Lip Reading the Royals: What Are They Really Saying? were blissfully unaware of the miserable evening these football supporters were enduring. Elland Road’s offering boiled down to a throwing contest and who could con referee Jarred Gillett into giving the softest free kick of the night.
Goals were in short supply, as they have been for a little while in the Premier League for Leeds. There is merit in remaining defensively resolute, in shutting out the division’s seventh-best team and their Golden Boot hunter in attack, but is enough happening at the other end?
Daniel Farke’s side have not scored in four league matches. Their last strike was more than a month ago against Aston Villa, a 0.04 expected goal (xG) free kick from Anton Stach, which will push for the division’s Goal of the Season crown.
They have scored once from open play in six matches and that was gifted to them by a Chelsea mix-up at Stamford Bridge. Dominic Calvert-Lewin, recalled by England last week, has two goals in his last 12 league outings.
United are in the midst of, comfortably, their longest winless run of the league season. The dizzying highs of February’s Nottingham Forest victory feel like a long time ago.
Mercifully, this latest batch of dropped points could have been punished far more severely on Sunday. Forest have closed in, but Leeds ended the weekend further ahead of Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United than they started it.
They are in a good place, with their Premier League status in their own hands, but the last two league games at Elland Road were among the worst spectacles their supporters have seen in years. It’s not entertaining, it’s not producing goals and fans may rightly wonder whether the current level is enough to keep them up.
It’s a newly promoted squad, of course, and it does not have the individual brilliance of other units, but they have won games this season and they have been a threat. Forest, Crystal Palace, Chelsea and West Ham were all cut to pieces in long phases of their trips to West Yorkshire. That cutting edge is missing for now.
Once the team sheets were published, it was clear what Keith Andrews had travelled north for. Brentford had not started a Premier League game with a five-man defence since they visited league leaders Arsenal on December 3, 17 matches prior to this encounter.
“Today, we expected a bit more four (players in defence) because, since the middle of December against Arsenal and Man City, they have not changed anymore,” said Daniel Farke. “We were thinking, ‘OK, they are also chasing for Europe, have to win and want to bring all their in-form offensive players on the pitch’.
Leeds players acknowledge their supporters after another bore draw (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)
“(This) was also a sign of respect they’ve shown today, in order to change their base formation. We took this as a positive sign, but (it) was still difficult to create against them.”
This was two five-man defences outnumbering their opposing attacks, smothering anything that came into their respective boxes. Neither goalkeeper was tested in any meaningful way, there were no big chances created and the teams combined to create an overall xG tally of one.
If one statistic sums up the evening, it’s the fact Brentford’s Igor Thiago alone contested 27 aerial duels. This was a match largely played in the air, whether it be from open play or set pieces. Ten of the 20 outfield players who started the match were 6ft 1in or taller.
It was a physical scrap, which never allowed a game to break out. Farke would acknowledge Brentford are the only team in recent times to match United’s physical dominance at Elland Road.
A game of this nature, punctuated by big tackles and aerial duels, was always likely to expose Brenden Aaronson. The American played a significant part in the team’s improvement through the winter, but it’s been some time since he really caught the eye in Leeds white.
Saturday night’s game was a glimpse into the past, at the Aaronson who provoked frustration in the early part of this campaign and throughout much of last year in the Championship. In an effort to inject some flair into this drab affair, Aaronson kept turning down blind alleys, holding on to the ball too long and then giving it away under the weight of opposition bodies.
Brenden Aaronson, challenging with Nathan Collins, was exposed by the physicality of the game (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)
Farke repeatedly praised Aaronson’s work rate, the fact he is able to do the running of two men, but if the manager is minded to tinker with his regular starters, his No 11 may be on the chopping block. A desire to get more team-mates around Calvert-Lewin may prompt such a switch.
This was another of those games where the England international looked isolated, working against three centre-backs on his own and, whenever he did win the ball, there was rarely anyone near him to capitalise on his knock-downs. Lukas Nmecha, starting with the No 9 for the second match in a row, was stationed wide again, tasked with defensive duties and pressing Michael Kayode, rather than as a striker next to Calvert-Lewin.
Draws — and there have been 10 of them in the last 18 league matches — are sound currency for a newly promoted outfit fighting relegation, but they keep Leeds dangling, waiting to be caught by those below. They are still well-placed and in a position many fans would have taken if offered it last August, but Sunderland and Brentford have each shown, in the last two home games, how to take the sting out of this Leeds team at Elland Road.
If Wolverhampton Wanderers and Burnley have been taking notes, the natives can only hope Farke and Leeds can find a way to buck this trend, or at least change the channel.