How many goalless draws do Leeds need in the last eight games of the season to stay up?
It’s a facetious question, but only a little bit. Because if nothing else it does appear to be a question Daniel Farke has asked himself, and to which his answer appears to be ‘a feasible number’.
This, against Europe-chasing Brentford, was Leeds’ second consecutive goalless draw in the Premier League on the back of a pair of 1-0 defeats. Their last Premier League goal came well over 400 minutes of playing time ago in the first half of the 1-1 draw with Aston Villa.
On its own, a hard-earned point against a team seventh in the league and chasing European football next season is one gained not two lost. They do still only need to keep one of Spurs, Nottingham Forest and West Ham below them for it to be mission accomplished, and on that basis they are now certain to leave the weekend at least as far clear as they entered it.
But… we just don’t know. It’s hard to look at this on its own when it’s a fourth game in a row without a Leeds goal.
There were two deeply frustrating passages in this game. The first when Caoimhin Kelleher picked up an injury – by sheer happenstance immediately after a Leeds double-substitution rejig. Mercifully, his maladies proved to be unserious and, after his team-mates had convened for a strategic time-out with Keith Andrews, play was able to continue. Phew.
The second irritation came in the final 10 minutes when, for the first time all night, Leeds actually had a real go. It was hard to conclude that it was anything other than Plan A. Stay in the game, continue staying in the game, stay in the game a little bit more, and then right at the very end try and nick it.
Listen, fair play, it could have worked. But it was unlikely to work and it didn’t really deserve to work. Leeds’ gameplan for victory against a Brentford side who have this season even managed to lose at Spurs for crying out loud was to hope for a bit of chaotic late good fortune. We’re really not sure that’s good enough.
What Leeds did do remarkably well is entirely snuff out Brentford’s own attacking threat. Brentford find themselves in rarefied air at this time, with the struggles of those directly above them in the league offering a tantalising chance at something extraordinary. It was no great surprise to see them appear to be unsure themselves of whether this was a good point or not in the giddy pursuit of Champions League football. We’re not sure either.
But it was a point they had to work incredibly hard for, and one which they looked even less likely to turn into three than Leeds did. Yet the sense remained that this was a game played according to Leeds’ will.
Which is impressive, in its way, as long as you accept the premise that this approach wasn’t a misguided one. By the time they get the next opportunity, it will be 51 days since their last Premier League goal. We’re really not sure it had to be like this.
However impressive an achievement it might be to come up against Igor Thiago and restrict his key penalty area contributions almost entirely to defensive headers, this is a high-wire act from Leeds that feels unnecessarily fraught.
Keeping a team like Brentford down to an xG of less than half a goal is obviously very good, but is it worth it when it comes at a cost of your own goalscoring chances becoming similarly titchy? It feels like a fair enough method to take to, say, Anfield, but less so for a home game against an overachiever, sure, but a beatable one.
It’s an approach that seems to be placing an awful lot of faith in managing to beat Burnley and Wolves, but at least that’s within Leeds’ own gift. It also appears to rely to a surely unhealthy extent on both Spurs and Forest remaining in their own winless purgatory.
Yet the obvious likelihood is that one of those two will get a win tomorrow that changes the whole feel of this relegation fight. There’s no escaping the thought that Leeds have given whoever wins that six-pointer tomorrow a bigger fillip than was necessary.
If Leeds do go down, nobody will ever be able to say they went without a fight as so many recent promoted sides have before them. But there may be a more agonising thought than that; they may just go down thinking ‘What if?’
And that’s the stuff that can haunt you.
Leeds’ best spell of the season came on the back of an agonising failed comeback at Man City. It appeared to be a lightbulb moment. They were not going to die wondering. A new, improved approach carried them to thrilling results against Chelsea and Liverpool and Palace and Forest.
The good massively outweighed the occasional dramatic misfire – as against Arsenal – or agonising misfortune – as at Newcastle.
The fight and heart unquestionably remain in Leeds, but that accompanying sense of adventure that elevated them through the winter has been lost.
