The first half was a bit like the home game against Arsenal in October, finishing with Leeds one down despite having had most of the game. But in the second half it was a different story, and the Gunners went on to win the game comfortably, matching the 4-1 scoreline their title rivals achieved earlier in the day.
Javi Gracia told LUTV that he had positives to take from the game despite the result. "I think we started well in the first half, creating some good chances and not conceding many chances to them. It’s true they scored one goal from a penalty, but we were in the game and competing well. The game in my opinion changed in the second half, conceding the early goal.”
"After that we kept going knowing it was difficult, we scored a goal, but the game in that moment was very tough for us. I’m happy with the attitude of my players, we knew before coming here that it would be a very demanding game for us. Now we are playing in three days, we don’t have time to complain, the best thing we can do is prepare as best as possible for this game.”
Mention of the vital game against Forest on Tuesday night might explain the rather odd starting line-up he selected for this game, perhaps suggesting he wasn’t expecting much from this fixture and was ensuring some key men are fresh for the next one. We were of course handicapped by the absence of Wöber, Adams and Gnonto, arguably our most important players in their respective areas of the field.
Javi explained that Struijk started instead of Cooper because the latter hasn’t managed that much training in recent weeks, even though he did get on the field for his country in midweek. But not many expected Kristiansen to move to the defensive midfield role instead of McKennie. And we also began with three wingers but no recognised striker, with Bamford, Rodrigo and Rutter all on the bench.
Perhaps if we had a little bit more up front we might have made our good work count during the first half when we were on top of the league leaders. Kristensen, Summerville and Harrison all had shots saved by Ramsdale during this period, but in truth they were all placed a little too close to the Arsenal keeper.
And while we were struggling with our own injury problems, it didn’t help that Arsenal’s most potent was back in their starting line up after his own lay-off. Jesus isn’t supposed to rise from the dead until Easter Sunday, but here he was, a week ahead of schedule. He seemed to go down a little bit easily in the box, but VAR confirmed that Ayling’s boot had made contact with his knee, so the penalty had to stand.
And another resurrection occurred as Jesus picked himself up off the floor to score the penalty himself, so despite all our good work we were behind, ten minutes before the break. And it was nearly two a few minutes later. For the second successive game Meslier came out of his box to clear, before an opponent spotted the chance to try the lob while he was way off his line. But unlike the Wolves game, Ayling got back in time to clear the goalbound effort off the line.
As Javi said, we were still in the game at the interval, but the second half was only two minutes old when Arsenal doubled their lead. After excellent work from Martinelli on their left the cross came through to find our old boy Ben White completely unchallenged at the far post, leaving him with the easy task of scoring from close range.
And there was more suspect defending as the Gunners went three up in the 55th. This time it was Trossard jinking his way into the space he needed to send the ball across the face of goal, and Jesus who hadn’t been picked up by our defence as he raced into score. It wasn’t until the 66th minute that Gracia made some changes to try to get back into the game, and it was a little too late by then.
McKennie came on for Aaronson to give the midfield a bit more ballast, while Rodrigo replaced Sinisterra, as the Colombian was finding it heavy going at this stage of his comeback. The second lot of substitutes saw Rutter on for Summerville and Cooper for Koch. The latter change meant that Cooper broke Gary Kelly’s record of playing for the most Leeds managers (with 11), according to a post I saw this week on social media.
We managed to pull one back on 76 minutes when Kristensen’s shot was deflected in, but Arsenal restored their three goal advantage near the end as we failed to track one of their runners yet again. This time it was Xhaka who was able to benefit, being left free to head past Meslier from close range. Our final sub saw Bamford coming on for Harrison, so we finished the game with three strikers on the field, but didn’t manage any more goals to show for it.
In truth this wasn’t a game that many of us expected Leeds to get anything from, so any positive result would have been a bonus. It might not have done us too much damage on a weekend when three matches pitched our relegation rivals against each other, though we could have done without Bournemouth’s win over Fulham.
So attention turns to Tuesday night, and while we can expect another positive and hard-working performance, we will need to make it count this time. Is there any chance of starting the game with some strikers?