So I’ve been promising to complete and publish this blog for long enough now and here we finally go. It’s more than 2 weeks on from the match itself now and it has taken this long to publish partly down to technical difficulties but also down to how little I wished to relive the experience.
Elland Road has never been a favoured stadium of mine, with my previous visits being dogged by both infuriating stewards and abysmal public transport links from the City centre to the stadium.
At least on this visit I was able to avoid starting my visit by swimming in the bowl of God’s Toilet as my new car allowed me to park on the edge of the bowl and climb down into Elland Road itself, though the climb out after the game was exhausting.
Before I get to the dross of the game itself though I want to make it clear that the nickname for the city did not come from me, instead it came from a Man from Hull that I met at a friend’s birthday party earlier in the day. We ended up speaking about our evening plans and when he heard I was going to Leeds he said ‘At least you’re going to God’s country and I spose even God needs a toilet’.
The match lived up to the environs it was played in as both teams tried to be worse than their opponents.
The hosts were more intentional in their attempts to pass for wet spaghetti anytime a Brentford player got within 5 feet of them than they were with the majority of their attempts to get past the halfway line.
Faced with this morass of ‘attacking’ mediocrity, where Caoimhin could have pitched a tent on the centre circle and no-one would have noticed, Brentford were despicably defensive.
We were set up with a back 5 of; Kayode, Keano (who would have been much more use driving forward on the wings), Collins, Van Den Berg and Pinnock (who has barely played all season), which meant that on the rare occasion that Leeds did adventure forward they were met with a brick wall but that also meant Karl Darlow could have taken several short naps in Caoimhin’s tent.
Our lack of cutting edge wasn’t helped by Shade having an off day, Damsgaard being left out of the squad entirely and Dango starting on the bench to accommodate the redundant back 5.
A complete lack of invention in midfield from Hendo, Jenson and Yarmo left Brazil’s number 9 feeding on scraps up top and unable to create anything of note.
The most enjoyable thing across the whole 90 minutes was the chants being traded between us and the home fans, nothing on the pitch came close to topping its excitement.
By Halftime the game was crying out for fresh legs and a player on either team that could provide a little creativity or an inventive pass to crack the match wide open, but both managers were moving slower than treacle in the depths of winter to make those changes.
It took 23 minutes of the second half slowing rocking the supporters to sleep for either manager to make a move and it came through a double substitution for the hosts and when that wasn’t enough to inject momentum into the match they made a 3rd in the 83rd minute.
For his part Keith Andrews certainly had less options on a bench filled out with 5 youngsters, but he still had the speed and invention of Reiss Nelson, Romelle Donovan and Dango Ouattara to call upon… he only called on the latter of the trio.
It took till the 77th minute for Dango to be brought on and that he was a straight replacement for Shade, not instigating a change of formation to drive an attacking end to the match, was infuriating to the point where smoke would have been coming out of my ears if this was a cartoon.
Nelson and Donovan have the speed and ingenuity this match was crying out for, so that neither was used is maddening.
I understand that Brentford are having an incredible season and if you’d said to me in the summer that we would be going into the run-in looking at potential European qualification I’d have snapped you hand off, but goalless draws are not the way we should want to get there.
Yeah, that’s not the most positive note to end this blog on but I spose it could be worse, at least I’m not a home fan… once the match was over I got to leave the toilet.
The Football tourist 