Leeds United aim to build on no-frills Brentford display

For all but half-an-hour of Saturday’s win over Brentford, Leeds United rediscovered the art of doing the basics well. Paul Heckingbottom will get to the stage where style begins to matter but a no-frills victory, his first as head coach, was all he required.

United’s defensive errors – the situations where, in Eunan O’Kane’s words, the club had cause to “point at someone specifically” – dried up and their shape in the second half kept Brentford playing in front of them.

It was, for 60 minutes, a reverse of the beating which Leeds took from the same group of players at Griffin Park in November.

O’Kane, like certain others at Leeds, has seen his influence and performances picked over since Christmas, and the midfielder was honest about the reality of a game in which his pass completion rate dropped to 60 per cent but his interceptions ranked higher than anyone else on the pitch.

Paired with Kalvin Phillips in the absence of Adam Forshaw, their inconsistent use of possession was offset by their discipline without it.

O’Kane said the pair had been guilty initially of concentrating too much on guarding Liam Cooper and Pontus Jansson, the centre-backs behind them.

“In the first half we tried to give Coops and Pontus a bit too much protection and Brentford were picking up a lot of second balls,” O’Kane said. “That partly led to them having their dominance.

“After that we went man-to-man, we matched them up and towards the end of the second half both of us won a lot of second balls.

“We maybe didn’t win them and break free on goal but Brentford weren’t picking it up in good positions. Both of us did the ‘dirty’ side of the game really well.

“From a personal point of view, and I’d imagine Kalvin would say the same thing, we can be better with the ball. When we watch it back we won’t be too pleased with that.

“But sometimes you have to dig in and roll your sleeves up. Sometimes you have to grind out a win.”

Leeds had been close to a victory under Heckingbottom previously: denied by the crossbar in injury-time of a 2-2 draw with Bristol City, albeit having staggered through the first hour of that match, and reeled in by a 92nd-minute equaliser at Derby County three days later.

The goals conceded by Leeds in both games were symptomatic of lingering disorganisation and reflected the failings which prompted the club to sack Thomas Christiansen at the start of this month.

On Saturday, Felix Wiedwald was untroubled in between a superb 13th-minute save from John Egan and a nervous parry to keep out Alan Judge’s free-kick at the end of normal time.

Having cut Leeds to shreds in parts of their 3-1 win at Griffin Park in November, Brentford were contained by Leeds defending in numbers and holding a rigid shape in front of Wiedwald.

“It didn’t work for us,” said Brentford manager Dean Smith. “As a whole in the second half we weren’t good enough on the ball.”

O’Kane added: “They’re a good side and the team we played down at their place were phenomenal.

“We knew they’d have a spell in the game, we knew their quality, and there was a 15 or 20-minute spell where they were on top. But once we got over that we looked more likely to score.

“They had a lot of the ball but they didn’t hurt us and they had it in areas where we were comfortable enough with them having it. If you keep clean sheets like this then you’ll move in the right direction.

“For every goal (Leeds have conceded) you can look back and point at someone specifically but in this game we were there as a unit.

“Everyone did their job, which is what the gaffer has been preaching to us since he came in.”

The clean sheet was United’s first since New Year’s Day, a bonus on top of a first win since December 26. It leaves Heckingbottom with decisions to make for Friday night’s game at Middlesbrough, another fixture which will turn the season for better or worse again.

Leeds’ head coach was without Forshaw over the weekend after the midfielder’s wife went into labour ahead of Brentford’s visit to Elland Road. Forshaw, a former Boro player, has been a calming influence since his £3m move from The Riverside in January but, ironically, Leeds ended a 10-game winless run on the first occasion when the 26-year-old was missing.

The centre of their midfield, as was the case throughout last season, is one area of United’s team which refuses to pick itself.

O’Kane and Phillips have been up and down and Ronaldo Vieira, Leeds’ precocious teenager, has been held back this season by form and tendonitis.

The situation leaves positions up for grabs, even at such a late stage of the term.

“Of course all four of us want to play,” O’Kane said. “There are only two of us who can play but all four of us want to, and we’ve all probably said in the last few weeks that we could have done better. None of us has really been happy with our performances.

“At the end of the day, the gaffer will pick who he thinks is best for any given day. Whoever gets picked, it’s down to them to get the results.”