Wilson on Bielsa et al.
Nick Ames was our man at Elland Road this evening. His report has landed. Here it is! Thanks for reading this MBM. Nighty night.
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An extremely happy Gabriel Martinelli, the man of the match, talks to Sky Sports. “It was a very good result. It was away. We are so happy with the result and our good work. We have a young team but a very strong team with very good players. It’s all about the team.”
Arsenal put a bit of distance between themselves and West Ham United ...
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Man City | 17 | 31 | 41 |
| 2 | Liverpool | 17 | 35 | 40 |
| 3 | Chelsea | 17 | 27 | 37 |
| 4 | Arsenal | 18 | 4 | 32 |
| 5 | West Ham | 17 | 7 | 28 |
... while Leeds continue to look over their shoulder towards the relegation zone, their goal difference having taken a pounding this week.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 | Leeds | 18 | -18 | 16 |
| 17 | Watford | 16 | -10 | 13 |
| 18 | Burnley | 15 | -7 | 11 |
| 19 | Newcastle | 17 | -19 | 10 |
| 20 | Norwich | 17 | -26 | 10 |
FULL TIME: Leeds United 1-4 Arsenal
Another dreadful result for Leeds, though for a while it threatened to be a lot worse. Arsenal, impressive in attack, consolidate fourth spot; Leeds will try to take whatever succour they can from an improved second-half showing.
90 min +2: The Leeds fans are giving their team a proper ovation, loud and four-square behind their manager.
90 min +1: On Sky, Gary Neville names Martinelli as man of the match. You can’t argue with the decision.
90 min: Just as they did at the Etihad on Tuesday night, the Leeds fans make one hell of a defiant racket. There will be three added minutes.
88 min: Koch is booked now, though, fouling Martinelli from behind in the frustrated style.
87 min: Lacazette turns into Koch and takes a whack in the coupon. The Arsenal striker thinks it was deliberate; the referee isn’t of that opinion. Lacazette wanders off in a gentle seethe.
86 min: Xhaka is booked for taking his sweet time over a free kick. No punishment for that obnoxious challenge on Raphinha, remember. He’s lucky to still be on the park.
85 min: Tavares comes on for Odegaard, whose work here is done.
GOAL! Leeds 1-4 Arsenal (Smith Rowe 84)
... so having said that, Odegaard drives at the back-tracking Leeds defence, then dinks a ball between Ayling and Koch for Smith Rowe, who batters the ball past Meslier. Any doubts are gone.
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83 min: Plenty of noise in Elland Road again. Leeds have shown admirable spirit in this second half, and they’re being rewarded with plenty of support.
81 min: Liam McCarron comes on to make his Leeds debut. He takes the place of the substitute Summerville. Odegaard is good to continue.
80 min: Odegaard is down, holding his head, having been clanked by Forshaw from behind. There wasn’t much in it, and play goes on for a while, but eventually Leeds are stopped mid-attack. On comes the trainer.
78 min: Both teams make a change. Klich is replaced by Greenwood, while Saka makes way for Smith Rowe.
77 min: Martinelli looks for his hat-trick goal again but can’t get a shot away from a position on the left. Then up the other end, Klich crosses from the right. Summerville meets it, six yards out, but can only bicycle kick wildly over the bar. A sense that the scoring is far from over, one way or another.
76 min: Suddenly Leeds are a little quicker to everything. Roberts and Raphinha combine down the inside-right channel, the former taking too long to consider a shot. Eventually he has a go, but there’s no time or space and the ball squirts harmlessly away.
GOAL! Leeds United 1-3 Arsenal (Raphinha 75 pen)
Raphinha absolutely larrups the penalty into the top right. The home fans celebrate by hollering Marcelo Bielsa’s name from the rafters.
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Penalty for Leeds!
73 min: Gelhardt dribbles in from the left. He reaches the edge of the six-yard box, but before he can shoot, he’s taken out by White’s foolish scissor tackle. The referee points to the spot.
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72 min: Summerville glides in from the left and considers shooting. He declines the invitation extended by the crowd, who want him to have a dig. Instead he tees up Roberts, who sends a pea-roller straight at Ramsdale. A poor effort that nonetheless stands as Leeds’ first on-target effort this evening.
70 min: Summerville strokes a pass down the left to release Gelhardt, who has the jump on Tierney. Ramsdale takes matters into his own hands by racing out of the box and hoicking clear.
68 min: Saka combines with Martinelli down the left and drags a shot across Meslier and inches wide of the right-hand post. After a relatively quiet start to the second half, Arsenal are beginning to bare their teeth again.
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67 min: White, formerly a hero round these parts, is rubbing his erstwhile fans up the wrong way. Now he tangles with Summerville just inside the Arsenal box. Both men fall over, but while Leeds want a penalty, there’s nothing in it other than mutual levels of clumsiness.
66 min: Martinelli has a run at Ayling and very nearly gets a shot away on the edge of the box. No hat-trick goal yet, and the flag goes up for offside anyway.
64 min: White and Raphinha go nose to nose over a trivial matter. They have to be pulled apart. For a second, both men looked ready to rumble.
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63 min: Tomiyasu is replaced by Cedric.
62 min: A strange episode as Forshaw is fouled. The referee raises his whistle but doesn’t blow. Everyone stops, except Roberts, so the ref waves advantage. Roberts immediately loses the ball and Arsenal race off upfield, the Leeds players and fans apoplectic. Fortunately nothing comes of Arsenal’s attack.
61 min: Drameh drives down the right at pace. He loops a long cross towards Gelhardt, who opts to cushion a volley back across the face of goal instead of hoofing towards it. Strange decision; that shot was there to be taken.
60 min: Forshaw makes a little space in the middle of the park and shovels a pass down the centre, nearly releasing Raphinha. Not quite, but Leeds have perked up, and are finally asking a couple of questions of the Arsenal defence.
59 min: Partey’s loose pass in midfield allows Raphinha to break upfield. He feeds Roberts, who launches a wild effort over the bar. This is a little better from Leeds, though the bar isn’t set high. Meanwhile Dallas comes back on.
57 min: Dallas is booked for tugging away at Tomiyasu’s shirt. Not sure if he’s injured himself in the process, because now he’s off the field having his ribs examined.
56 min: Raphinha and Klich combine well down the right, the latter fizzing a low ball through the six-yard box. Summerville races in, hoping to slam home from six yards, but Tomiyasu gets in the way to block and shepherd the ball away from danger. That’s great football all round.
54 min: Odegaard nearly gets on the end of a long punt down the middle. Meslier reads the danger, races from his box, and hooks clear, just in time. Here’s Sam Campbell: “If that’s not a red for Xhaka then we should just pack VAR up as there is no point having it if it won’t be used to punish terrible challenges such as that.” Preach on, brother.
52 min: This won’t help Leeds’ mood. Gelhardt is booked for an almost identical challenge on Tomiyasu. He could easily have walked as well. Two really poor challenges. No idea what the referee and VAR dude are up to.
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50 min: Raphinha is off getting treatment on that ankle. It’ll have been a sore one. He’s fortunate Xhaka didn’t connect further up his leg, because that could have done some serious damage.
49 min: VAR has a check, but absurdly there’s no punishment. Xhaka responds with a wide smile and a laugh. He’s really got away with one there. Another referee, another VAR operative, could easily have sent him packing.
48 min: Xhaka refuses to step away as Klich tries to take a quick free kick. He’s not booked, but then goes in on Raphinha, unnecessarily hard, studding the Leeds man on his ankle. He could be in trouble here.
47 min: The second corner leads to Xhaka having a dig from just inside the box. The ball pinballs around and away, but already the signs aren’t looking good for Leeds.
46 min: One corner leads to another, Leeds again struggling to clear their lines.
Arsenal restart the match. Within 20 seconds, they earn their first corner of the second half.
A thoroughly depressing reason for that discussion between the Arsenal staff and the officials. Sky Sports reports an allegation of racial abuse by Leeds fans directed at the subs on the Arsenal bench. The referee and his team will investigate.
Half-time entertainment. Leeds fans wishing to block out the present can celebrate their illustrious past with this delightful tribute to Peter Lorimer. Arsenal fans desirous of even more entertainment can read this paean to their hate-hate relationship with Manchester United. Consider these pieces early Christmas presents from the MBM to you. Merry reading!
HALF TIME: Leeds United 0-3 Arsenal
Arsenal have been effervescent in attack ... but Leeds are a shocking rabble. Absurdly open. If they’re not careful, they’ll be on the end of another seven-goal shellacking here. Bielsa walks off, head bowed. A smattering of booing. It’s going to be a long second half for the hosts.
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45 min: Three more minutes for Leeds to hang on before they can scuttle off to the sanctuary of the dressing room.
44 min: Leeds are abject. In the space of 60 seconds, Odegaard and Saka take turns to force Meslier into desperate last-ditch saves. This could get extremely ugly for Leeds ... again.
43 min: The Leeds faithful aren’t happy, and the referee tells Arsenal not to celebrate in front of them. VAR checks the goal for offside, but Leeds aren’t getting away with it.
GOAL! Leeds 0-3 Arsenal (Saka 42)
Saka jinks in from the right. He’s allowed to run all the way across the front of the box. He attempts to one-two with Lacazette. It doesn’t quite come off but the ball breaks to him anyway. He takes a touch left, then right, and aims for the bottom right. The ball breaks off Klich and into the bottom left.
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40 min: Gelhardt tries to close Ramsdale down, and gets reasonably close. The keeper clears just in time. It’s the best Leeds have managed for a while.
39 min: The home fans have packed in the defiant verse, with Arsenal now strolling around in style. Lacazette and Saka combine down the right and nearly open Leeds up, but Ayling stands firm. Leeds need to hear the half-time whistle.
37 min: Arsenal are utterly dominant at the moment. The home fans try to get their side going with some defiant verse. No response as of yet.
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35 min: Leeds ship possession in their final third yet again, this time giving Lacazette the chance to shoot from a tight-ish angle to the left of the six-yard box. Meslier stops that one. Lacazette wears the look of a man who thinks he should have scored. Speaking of Arsenal goalscorers, young Martinelli has found a fan in Charles Antaki: “Au revoir, Auba, et merci.”
33 min: Roberts continues for now. Meanwhile there’s a brouhaha on the touchline, the Arsenal staff complaining to the fourth official, then the referee, about something. We know not what. Some form of crowd interaction? There’s a lot of pointing towards an undetermined spot in the stand going on. More when we have it.
32 min: Roberts has a look from distance, but it’s always sailing wide right. He bends over in pain afterwards. Surely not another injury? He’s looking across to the bench.
31 min: Harrison limps off, to be replaced by Summerville. Everything is going wrong for Leeds at the minute.
30 min: Leeds try to respond immediately, Klich making ground down the right but failing to find a team-mate in the middle, or win a corner. Elland Road is even quieter now, save the Arsenal fans making merry.
GOAL! Leeds 0-2 Arsenal (Martinelli 28)
Another goal that’s way too easy for Arsenal. Xhaka slips a pass down the middle to release Martinelli, who holds off Drameh and enters the box. He looks to have taken a heavy touch, but then dinks over Meslier.
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27 min: Raphinha wrestles with Tierney over a throw. He catches the Arsenal full-back on his chin. Tierney briefly considers making something of it, but thinks better of it. He’d have given the referee something to think about had he acted up, though whether it was intentional is another matter.
25 min: ... but then, out of nothing, Leeds nearly equalise! Leeds clear long. Raphinha is suddenly racing at Tierney. He beats him as he zips across the front of the box, drops a shoulder to see off White as well, then drags a low shot inches wide of the right-hand post with only Ramsdale to beat.
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24 min: Tierney floats in from the left and pearls a low drive towards the bottom left. Meslier does well to stick out a strong hand to turn the ball out for a corner, then bollocks his team-mates, who were once again way too open and passive.
23 min: Arsenal have enjoyed 84 percent possession in the last five minutes.
22 min: Ayling tries to slip Raphinha clear down the middle, and nearly does so, but Gabriel had stuck to his task and eventually draws a foul from his fellow Brazilian. Leeds were after a penalty, the pair falling down, but it was Raphinha who was doing all the pulling.
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21 min: Elland Road has gone a little quiet since the opening goal, understandably so given the events of the week. Raphinha tries to get the punters going again, spotting Ramsdale off his line and trying the spectacular from the centre circle. Nope.
20 min: Dallas is back up and, having been given the once-over, raring to go.
18 min: Oh Leeds. That was so avoidable, though it was a great run by Lacazette and a sumptuous finish. Saka, having seen the way, dribbles in from the right and blooters a shot goalwards. Dallas, who had slipped over, inadvertently blocks the shot with the back of his head. Good news for Leeds, not so great for the player himself, who felt that. On come the trainers.
GOAL! Leeds 0-1 Arsenal (Martinelli 16)
Saka busies himself, coming in from the right. The ball breaks to Lacazette, then Xhaka, who goes over looking for a penalty. He’s not getting one, but Forshaw, in attempting to dribble clear, loses possession to Martinelli, who opens his body and curls an unstoppable shot into the top right.
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15 min: The Sky cameras train on former Barcelona and Chelsea midfielder, sitting in the stand. He’s now Raphinha’s agent. Worrying news for Leeds with the January window coming up?
13 min: The game’s settled down a little after the harum-scarum start. This is Bielsa’s Leeds, of course, so don’t expect this state of affairs to be maintained for long.
11 min: Raphinha and Klich make their presence felt down the right, but there’s nobody in the box other than lots of Arsenal defenders. They’re forced to turn tail. “Is there a greater contrast in personal presentation between two Premier League managers than Mikael Arteta and Marcelo Bielsa?” asks Kári Tulinius of our bucket-squatting, technical-area-jigging touchline duo. “The former is so well groomed and put together that he looks like the computer generated hologram of himself, while the latter looks like the man who turns up at your door in the middle of the night with an offer you can’t refuse.”
9 min: Tomiyasu goes up for a high ball with Harrison and gives his opponent a painful knee in the side as he wins a header in the no-nonsense style. Then Klich is unceremoniously brushed to the floor by Xhaka. Both challenges are fair; both get the home crowd’s dander up.
7 min: Mikel Arteta is already leaping around in the technical area, throwing semaphore shapes and yelling at his players. Marcelo Bielsa sits calmly on his bucket. Meanwhile here’s Alex Adams: “This might be the blinkered views of a Leeds fan, but the fact that this game is going ahead at all shows a total absence of common sense. Not only do we have 38,000 people in one place as Omicron rages through the UK, but injury-decimated Leeds have a bench of literal actual children. I fear another cricket score, while unnecessarily placing fans and players in the Covid crosshairs. The only good thing about this game are Arsenal’s warm-up tracksuits. Reminds me of 1990s Romania.”
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5 min: Tierney cuts in from the left and has a speculative dig from 25 yards. Straight at Meslier, who gathers well. Expect the poor Leeds keeper to be in the eye of the storm this evening.
4 min: Nothing comes of the corner, but Leeds can’t carry on like this. De Bruyne and Foden were given all sorts of room at the Etihad earlier in the week, and look what happened there. Odegaard had the red carpet rolled out for him in similar style there.
3 min: Leeds, seemingly having learned nothing from the City debacle, gift Odegaard an absurd amount of space. He slips a pass down the middle for Lacazette, who is free in the box. Meslier smothers. Leeds half clear. Arsenal come straight back at them, Partey having a whack from an advanced position down the right channel. Meslier turns that one round for a corner.
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1 min: From the resulting corner, Raphinha flashes a header over the bar. Ayling claims to have been impeded, but the referee isn’t interested. Elland Road is bouncing.
30 sec: Saka dozes, allowing Dallas to tear down the left and win a corner. An early statement of intent, right there.
Leeds get the party started ... but only after everyone takes the knee. Applause rings round Elland Road. There’s no room for racism.
Here come the teams! Leeds wear their Revie-Real white, while Arsenal are wearing a design that seems to have been inspired by the seats on the Piccadilly Line. It’s misty at Elland Road, but not half as bad as it was an hour ago. We’ll be off in a minute!
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Mikel Arteta has his turn on Sky. “We had a couple of good results and good performances, but we have to carry on, we have to get some consistency going. There are other games suspended, but we want to improve our position in the league, and we have a tough game today. We need resilience away from home. We know what to expect out there, it’s going to be a battle, I expect a really difficult match.” He also reports that “quite a lot of staff members and a few players” have tested positive for Covid-19, but refuses to be drawn on whether matches should be postponed across the board, pointing out that it’s a decision the Premier League and the government have to make.
Marcelo Bielsa talks to Sky Sports. “To win is always important. After two defeats, even more. And after a defeat like the last one, even more so. Until yesterday we were more or less organised, but in the penultimate training session, Charlie Cresswell suffered an injury to his clavicle, and from today Diego Llorente will be absent for the next ten days at least. There are seven players who are absent and that forces us to quicken the return of Robin Koch.”
Leeds midfielder Adam Forshaw adds: “We want to make amends. [The 0-7 at City] was a poor performance. There are ways to get beat, but we didn’t do very well on the night. Only a couple of days before, it was one of our best performances against Chelsea, so we won’t forget that either, and hopefully we can put it right today.”
TV times. Gary Byrne is already concerned about tonight’s episode of Match of the Day, having presumably worked out the running order. “If this game ends goalless, do Lineker & Co even bother turning up?” he wonders. You couldn’t blame them if they didn’t, and it would be nice if BBC1 had the brass neck to whack up an old interlude film for an hour in their place, everyone at the channel swinging their boots up on the desk. Of course, back in the day, when the Match of the Day cameras were sent to one predetermined ground and that was that, the likes of Jimmy Hill and Bob Wilson would have to vamp heroically if the BBC had selected a stinker. Even more heroically, viewers usually found themselves sitting through it regardless, with nowt else of interest on BBC2 or ITV. At least tonight you can switch over to the darts, the NFL or extended coverage of the week’s select committees on Parliament. The world is your oyster. God bless these multi-channeled times.
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Leeds are decimated by injuries and suspension. Dan James, Diego Llorente and Jamie Shackleton all picked up knocks during the 7-0 humiliation at Manchester City, while Junior Firpo is suspended. Kalvin Phillips and Patrick Bamford are still out with hamstring injuries. Robin Koch is back, though, having recovered from a pelvic problem. Cody Drameh makes his first Premier League start at right-back.
No changes for Arsenal from the impressive victory over West Ham. The ill-disciplined Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang misses out altogether again.
The teams
Leeds United: Meslier, Drameh, Ayling, Koch, Klich, Dallas, Forshaw, Raphinha, Roberts, Harrison, Gelhardt.
Subs: Klaesson, Bate, Summerville, Greenwood, McCarron, Jenkins, Moore, Kenneh, Gray.
Arsenal: Ramsdale, Tomiyasu, White, Gabriel, Tierney, Saka, Partey, Xhaka, Martinelli, Odegaard, Lacazette.
Subs: Leno, Smith Rowe, Holding, Cedric, Pepe, Tavares, Chambers, Elneny, Nketiah.
Referee: Andre Marriner (West Midlands).
This is a rematch of the 1972 FA Cup final. The centenary final doesn’t have much of a reputation outside Elland Road these days, received wisdom suggesting it was a drab non-event. But don’t listen to that. The highlights are more than worth five minutes of your time. A BBC Video Memory Match, no less. No idea how there was just the one goal. Enjoy, enjoy.
Preamble
With the weekend Premier League card decimated by Covid, one hoary old MBM trope seems more relevant than ever: this game between Leeds United and Arsenal is ON. Kick off is at 5.30pm GMT. It’s, to reiterate, on!
