Until The World Stops Going Round

Leeds draw at Villa, 'Winnable' run-in, Marsch vs Allardyce vs dignity.

Leeds held by 12-man Villa

On Saturday Leeds were back in the second city, this time to face Aston Villa. Despite Villa's lofty 3rd place position, and the half-hearted talk of a title challenge, Leeds equipped themselves well.

With regular pantomime villain - the fat-arsed child-maimer (no, I haven't forgotten about that assault on Archie Gray) John McGinn - out injured, we were waiting to see who would fill that void. We didn’t have to wait for long; enter Michael Oliver, who quickly showed where his allegiances lay.

Leeds may have taken the lead in the first half through a worldie of a free-kick from Anton Stach, but as the game wore on, more and more soft decisions began to tot up in Villa's favour, while Leeds were given fuck all. I was fully expecting Oliver to drop the facade and start joining his mates wearing claret and blue in taking pot shots at Karl Darlow's goal.

Much to the delight of Oliver and co, Villa equalised late on through a lucky Tammy Abraham knee deflection, which gave them an unjust share of the points. The manner of the equaliser is obviously hard to take, but at the end of the day, it's another point earned in a game that we weren't necessarily expected to get much from.

The results for the teams around us once again went our way, too. Spurs generously helped Arsenal get their title tilt back on track as they lay down in a 4-1 defeat; West Ham's attacking prowess was on show as they squandered multiple chances in their 0-0 in draw with Bournemouth; Forest hilariously conceded a 97th minute winner against Liverpool to push Marinakis one-step closer to his inevitable massive coronary.

'Winnable' Remaining Fixtures

According to the Opta supercomputer (whatever the fuck that is), and it's 'power rankings', Leeds have the easiest remaining fixtures out of all the teams in the Premier League. Sounds great, right? It's certainly better than having to play a load of hard games, but at the same time it would be so on-brand for Leeds to fuck it up. How many times in the past have we seen Leeds throw it away from a near-unassailable position? Too often. For the record, I do believe we'll stay up, but It won't be quite as straightforward as a computer would have us believe.

Sad Beef

This week saw an unfortunate re-emergence of two figures from our past that we'd all rather forget about. It all started when Sam Allardyce appeared on a podcast called No Tippy Tappy Football (of course) where he criticised the two managers who followed Bielsa (Marsch and Gracia) for the team's drop in fitness. Well this was like a red-rag to an incompetent bull. Clearly using the extra time afforded to him as Canada's national team manager well, the thin-skinned, insecure, glorified P.E teacher took to twitter to contest Allardyce's opinion by posting some random spreadsheet as if it were conclusive proof to the contrary.

Unfortunately for Jesse, the 'underlying stats' he so regularly referred to don't win football games, and he can post all the spreadsheets he wants, but they're convincing no one. We all remember his Leeds team and how fucking inept they were, and we all remember how burst they looked in the last 15 minutes of matches.

Not quite finished embarrassing himself, Marsch then replied to another tweet where he distanced himself from the 22/23 relegation, instead referring to the season before where a Raphinha-inspired Leeds stayed up by the skin of their teeth.  It's laughable that he would try to absolve himself of responsibility for Leeds' return to the Championship as if his finger-prints weren't all over it.

Allardyce vs Marsch: stuck-in-the-past prick vs new-age wanker. One needs to fuck off to Benidorm and drink his pints of wine, while the other needs to develop some humility and focus on trying not to embarrass at Canada at the World Cup. In this 'beef' they're both losers. The real loser, though? Dignity.