Jon Howe: No more hard luck stories

Jon Howe: No more hard luck stories

Weekly column.

In his latest column for leedsunited.com, lifelong supporter Jon Howe looks ahead to Saturday's game as Leeds United travel to Brighton & Hove Albion.

Howe is the author of two books on the club, ‘The Only Place For Us: An A-Z History of Elland Road’ - which has been updated as a new version for 2021 - and ‘All White: Leeds United’s 100 Greatest Players’ in 2012.


Jon Howe


I once landed upon an irrational notion that a team could, in theory, navigate an entire season facing opposition who were in some way under-strength and hampered by injury or suspension in every game. This affords that team a considerable advantage and could even result in them winning trophies or promotion, when perhaps they were not as good as people thought they were. I’m sure to some extent this has happened. Unfortunately the reverse is also true, in that a team can themselves be at a disadvantage in every game through no fault of their own and can struggle as a result, when in fact they are a decent team and should be much higher up the table. 

Alas, the record books show no asterisks for hard luck stories, or good luck stories. Nobody remembers the minutiae of harsh red and yellow cards, COVID absentees and annoyingly complex injuries when assessing the brutal realities of divisional status in May. And I’m sure Marcelo Bielsa will find no comfort in the suggestion that Leeds United’s luck must soon turn, at least in terms of available personnel. There is no scientific law to cling to here, and in the cavernous depths of Marcelo’s clinical pre-match analysis he will find very little that he can control, and hence, bad luck probably doesn’t worry him.

The game at Spurs last Sunday was a classic case in point. Leeds lost yet more hugely influential personnel before it and fell to two goals which each enjoyed an element of fortune, the second bordering on demonic witchcraft as far as Leeds were concerned. But Marcelo will be more interested in the fact that Leeds controlled the game for large parts and there were several positives to come out of the defeat; namely the performances of Kalvin Phillips, Adam Forshaw, Jack Harrison, Dan James and Joe Gelhardt, although hardly anyone came off the pitch thinking they could have given more.

It was another hard luck story, much like the game at Newcastle and the home games with Wolves and Leicester, and arguably others. But no team can survive on hard luck stories alone, however many positives you can take from a game. And while it’s stating the obvious, there is an increasing need to turn these improving performances into points, and ideally in increments of three. 

Seeing Brighton away on the horizon as the next fixture this coming Saturday brings any such gung-ho buoyancy to a crashing halt, even if it shouldn’t. Leeds have never won at the Amex Stadium in seven previous visits, we much preferred the temporary stands, complimentary rain ponchos and rustic non-league vibe of the Withdean Stadium. We could pretend we are playing that same club this weekend and recreate those heady days of singing distant encouragement across a windswept eight-lane running track, but the club and the experience is very different now.

Furthermore, last season’s fixtures against Brighton were two in which Leeds were so far from their natural selves that they enjoyed no period of dominance in either game. The vim and vigour of our debut Premier League season came to a shuddering standstill each time we faced Brighton, as if Graham Potter held some kind of Garry Monk-style hex over Marcelo Bielsa and they sneaked a case load of Kryptonite into our dressing room on each occasion.

Tactically, there is little to explain why Brighton held a spell over Leeds last season, except that Kalvin Phillips missed both games and Raphinha missed the second. And we all know how brilliant Ben White is, and he won’t be there on Saturday, and Adam Forshaw is back in our midfield too. So maybe that is the key to unravelling this strange Seagull-shaped conundrum, which created the only blemish to a riotously impressive end to our season? Suffice to say, I’m sure Marcelo will have a special folder saved on his laptop marked ‘Brighton’ and he will have been clicking on it religiously since last May.

In other words, I’m mildly confident that we will see a different Leeds performance against Brighton this time around. Brighton boss Graham Potter was spotted in the shiny, neon-lit corridors of Tottenham’s space-age stadium last Sunday like an interloper from the dark side, and if anyone from Marcelo Bielsa’s Rebel Alliance had seen him it may have sparked a fury of covert radio mic conversations. But Leeds had nothing to cover up and no need to deceive. What Potter will have seen was a supremely confident display from a team lacking in personnel and yet brimming with belief, structure and gallantry. Indeed, three things he probably didn’t see in our two games last season.

The Spurs game somehow felt like a fixture Leeds were never fated to win, what with the media’s fascination with Antonio Conte and a disproportionate obsession with Spurs as a whole, but on paper the Brighton fixture looks far more accommodating. While Brighton sit comfortably in ninth place, and on 17 points, they haven’t won since 19th September and the four games they have won were against Burnley, Watford, Brentford and Leicester. Of course they will look at the position of Leeds in the table and think this is an opportunity to get back on track, but certainly Brighton shouldn’t transmit the same level of fear now that the team who won four of their opening five games did.

Luck has materially affected almost every game Leeds have played this season, indeed every game they have ever played, and we do have to remember that it works both ways. Leicester’s ‘goal’ disallowed by VAR is a prime example. But we are entitled to expect the positive variety of luck to work more in our favour sometime soon, even if it doesn’t exactly even out over the longer period, as people routinely believe it does.

I have no doubt that Marcelo Bielsa will be of the belief that luck should never be a factor, and that if you work hard enough and control the things you can control, you shouldn’t have to rely on it playing any part in a result. And in that sense, while we can point to penalties not being awarded, a succession of injuries and some heartless deflections, we can also point to some poor finishing and a lack of composure in front of goal.

A change of luck will come and Leeds will definitely benefit from it, but in the meantime, they have enough about them, and enough within their control, to make sure luck doesn’t come into it and nobody is in any doubt as to what status they deserve and what a great team they are.  

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