‘Leeds United have got the ending they deserved – and I believe there’s so much more to come’

Welcome back to Leeds United - Under The Spotlight!

It was great to watch James Trafford, who I tipped to bounce back last week, get a clean sheet and impress against Spurs. It was equally impressive to see him comfortable playing out with the ball at his feet, and around the hour mark he was involved in a lovely team move that almost led to what would have been a goal of the season contender. Add in a brilliant save late on and it was a great day for Trafford and a great day for Leeds.

This week I am going to be talking about endings. When writing a play, I will always have an ending in mind before I begin. This allows me to focus everything towards that endpoint, to allude to things that will happen later on but also to subvert expectations along the way.

Even when I am writing an individual scene, I want to have in mind a crisis point where something new is revealed, a truth is uncovered or a relationship has changed, for example. Then the plan is to write the scene so that the characters, the audience, or both think the opposite will happen, or that the scene is about something else entirely. The aim is to make the ending feel surprising but believable.

In football, there is not the luxury of knowing how the game, or even the season for that matter, will end. Yet the endings often change the narrative of everything that went before. If Leeds had not scored against Spurs, there would be more talk about a lack of goals, more pressure on the forward players and more pressure on Daniel Farke. Add to that the international window and the whole feel of the club would have been different for the next fortnight.

At half-time it was all feeling a bit familiar. Leeds were resolute but seemed to be struggling to create anything of note. Then in the second half there was a noticeable shift with Leeds managing to create a number of chances, and create them in open play answering a few questions that had been posed in recent weeks. However, these chances came and went with Tanaka and Longstaff squandering the best opportunities.

By the 75th minute there was a sense that the audience, being the crowd, and the characters, being the players themselves, knew that this could be heading towards a frustrating nil-nil, or perhaps even worse with Spurs, who had been abject in the second half, potentially nicking something undeserved. We’ve all seen that story before.

However, this all changed when Okafor came on the pitch in the 78th minute, and 97 seconds later he finished beautifully to score what would be the winning goal. Surprising but believable. It was surprising, as Okafor had only just come on and it felt like Leeds’ best chances had come and gone, but it was entirely believable as Leeds’ second-half dominance was worthy of a goal. Leeds had got the ending they deserved.

With that goal, how the preceding 78 minutes are perceived changes. Chances missed become knocking on the door, 6/10 performances become 7/10 performances and a good team performance can become a very good team performance. Goals change games, and they can also change the narrative.

The win against Spurs marked an end to the first act of this Premier League campaign. With ten games gone and going into an international break, it feels like we are now going into the middle of the season. That win has changed the narrative in how the season is perceived - what was a good start, is now a very good start.

The summer recruitment looks to, again, have been fantastic and the squad feels full of the right type of characters to wear the Leeds United badge. There is also a great foundation to this team with its defensive solidity giving us a great chance of points in every match - only Arsenal and Brighton have conceded fewer than Leeds so far.

And what encourages me most is that I think there is more to come from this squad, and particularly more to come in terms of creating chances and scoring goals. If Leeds were to improve in that department then the end to this season could be as special as the end to the Spurs game.

But right now we are still only at the end of the beginning…