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Leeds United v Bristol Rovers: Squad must deliver - Hay
Time and again this week, two assertions have been made about Leeds United and an automatic promotion place which is playing hard to get.
Firstly, that the club would have gratefully accepted an opportunity to win promotion on the season's last day had that plot been put to them on its first.
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And secondly, that the club will deserve everything they get if their players re-enact Devon Loch's fatal stumble against Bristol Rovers tomorrow.
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Logical those claims sound, but the more you hear them the more you wonder. Would Leeds genuinely have wished to see the tail-end of their season play out as it has? Can the merits of promotion be fairly judged on a single result against Bristol Rovers, on a day of no consequence for them?
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A footballer's psyche is surely more ambitious and a season more complex.
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The theory that Leeds will not merit promotion if they fail to beat Bristol Rovers misses the point of a 46-match term. Put simply, Leeds will not deserve promotion if they fail to finish second. This might be a one-game season, to harness the words of their manager Simon Grayson, but it ought not to be seen in that context once the dust settles on this weekend.
Take Sheffield Wednesday. Last Sunday, during coverage of their face-off with Crystal Palace, the BBC's commentator remarked that "after 45 games, it all comes down to the three minutes of injury-time". A reasonable comment at the time but not in the aftermath when analysis of Wednesday's relegation rightly took issue with a woeful season consisting of 11 wins and 21 defeats.
Reflection and recrimination at Hillsborough will pay no heed to the three minutes when salvation might have been at hand. They hanged themselves over a period of many, many weeks.
Likewise with Leeds. Their final league position is dependent on tomorrow's fixture, but the game in isolation is not responsible for it. United's players and staff are unlikely to rue the result if it does them no service; they will rue instead the run of four successive losses to Southampton, Millwall, Norwich City and Swindon Town; the waste of their recent fixture at Gillingham; the nine defeats since the start of January and the stagnant form prolonged by those regular
defeats.
So long is the timeline of an individual season that final league tables can never be explained in terms of luck: good, bad or indifferent. The general opinion at Charlton Athletic on Saturday was that Leeds were fortunate to have held onto second position in League One, fortunate on account of Millwall's defeat to Tranmere Rovers.
Millwall might as readily count their blessings after a weekend which might have resigned them to the play-offs. Leeds deserve to be second for the sole reason that they are there after 45 games and nine months of persistence.
Which takes us back to the theory that the club would have settled for this scenario on August 8, before a ball was kicked.
Grayson and Richard Naylor, United's captain, made that claim after Saturday's loss at the Valley, a stock phrase for managers and players with promotion on their minds. So demanding has this term been – tomorrow's match is Leeds 60th competitive game – that they might simply be pleased to have lasted the pace. Millwall have played 53 times to date and Swindon Town 52. Charlton's match at Oldham Athletic is their 50th.
But in August? Something tells you that Grayson might have hoped for more from his squad this season, if not necessarily expected it. The players available to him had the makings of a championship-winning team or one who could finish second with room to spare. It is possible, of course, that he would have settled for the chance which awaits his squad tomorrow before the season began, but he would not have crawled over broken glass to take it on January 1, with 56 points accrued from 23 matches. He'd have taken the title, thank you very much.
League One, from United's perspective, is tighter than it should have been, or tighter than it needed to be. Yet history will not remember that. Below the Premier League, it never remembers champions, only those who won promotion and those who lost it narrowly or spectacularly. Locally, it remembers too the players who achieved it.
Whenever promotion comes within reach of Leeds, it is natural to revisit their destructive past. The road to this point has been vicious: relegation, administration, two points deductions, two play-off defeats and three different managers. All of that without touching on anything before the start of 2007. Perhaps, on reflection, the situation that Leeds are embroiled in is as good as this club should ever hope for, as good as they can expect.
"It's a simple equation for us," said Grayson at the Valley. Indeed it is, dependent now on his players delivering when it matters. This weekend, it absolutely matters.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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