Phil at his best...
Choose Leeds. Choose Elland Road. Choose Leicester at home on a Tuesday night. Choose Highways England mangling the M62 and the M621. Choose a f**king big crisis.
Choose Jesse Marsch, choose the penis formation, choose pressing, counter-pressing, one left-back, 12 wingers. Choose back-post concessions, the Redeem Team, clinging to the xG differential and underlying stats. Choose calling relegation impossible and then veering onto that road again, with less control of the wheel than ever.
Choose flying to see Charles De Ketelaere. Choose flying to see Cody Gakpo. Choose Bamba Dieng not flying to see you. Choose flying Willy Gnonto in from Switzerland and rating him as not Premier League ready. Choose talking up the club’s pool of forwards as two of them get injured and the transfer deadline draws near. Choose signings on hire purchase in a range of f**king fabrics. Choose Raphinha to Barcelona and Kalvin Phillips to Manchester City. Choose money from them ploughed into Red Bull ideals.
Choose Fullerton Park’s potholes. Choose traffic on the inner ring-road. Choose travelling away to London on the world’s worst rail service and wondering who the f**k you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing defeats, stuffing something resembling a meat-and-potato pie into your mouth. Choose fixture rearrangements costing you money while the Premier League ponders breaking the 3pm blackout rule to please its broadcast partners. Choose the Premier League anthem gatecrashing Marching on Together. Choose Ivan Toney on a 28-minute hat-trick.
Choose sticking with Marsch until February. Choose sacking Marsch once the die is virtually cast. Choose the 12 days of Chris Armas before he goes. Choose Andoni Iraola or Arne Slot. Choose parachuting in Alfred Schreuder and then sending him home, to prevent civil unrest. Choose Michael Skubala as caretaker for forthcoming fixtures and then choose Javi Gracia after one. Choose hope before half-time against Crystal Palace and hara-kiri from then on. Choose VAR looking the other way. Choose Jean-Kevin Augustin softening the mood by winning an award of £24.5million in compensation, £500,000 for every minute played. Choose another appeal to CAS.
Choose sending Jack Harrison to Leicester on January deadline day. Choose bringing him back again just as his medical is starting. Choose losing Mateusz Klich and then missing his shithousing and his stones. Choose breaking the club’s transfer record for Georginio Rutter and then playing almost anyone else. Choose a 10 per cent rise in season tickets, a tweet about JFK, a linguistically advanced approach to programme notes. Choose a mutinous away end at Fulham. Choose everything piled on Leicester at home. Choose Leeds.
Choose Leeds because despite everything, despite the troubled roadmap, you never stop believing that something still burns. Choose Leeds because no one wants it to be like this, not the club nor the crowd. Choose milling around with the thousands outside, sun dipping, doubts swimming, nowhere to be while time drags. Choose ‘Keep Fighting’ as the headline on the local fanzine’s front cover, the mantra Leeds lived by when the sport first took notice of them.
Choose an unchanged midfield, Marc Roca and Weston McKennie, and Rodrigo and Patrick Bamford up front. Choose Rodrigo imitating Vinnie Jones, trying to kill anything that moves, whipping up the crowd, taking out Wout Faes, smashing Youri Tielemans. Choose Elland Road at its guttural best, generating noise that wobbles the eyeballs and says no one will leave here without giving blood. Choose the tantalising mirage that help is at hand.
Choose Tielemans finding the top corner after seven minutes and the VAR arriving like a white knight, spotting an earlier offside. Choose Harrison, so close in January to wearing Leicester’s shirt, crossing from the right, deep and difficult to defend, finding Luis Sinisterra who plants a downward header past Daniel Iversen, no nonsense, no mistake, no joke. Choose the total commitment of 36,000, fatigued after two hard years but not going anywhere, invested, competing for everything. Choose James Maddison stabbing wide from point-blank range. For 45 minutes, choose everything going right, everyone’s muscles burning like it’s the last-chance saloon.
But come the second half, choose backwards steps and players getting tight as Elland Road launches into a WACCOE on 50 minutes, the start of the long road to the finish line. Choose Brenden Aaronson off the bench instead of Gnonto, to the disgruntlement of the West Stand, as Jamie Vardy appears from Leicester’s. Choose no further substitutes in the last 20 minutes, despite the tide turning and the stands barking for changes. Choose one loss of structure too many as Vardy runs through to score the goal he has scored a million times in his career, balanced, body open, ball feathered inside the far post. Choose relying on the offside flag again as Vardy scores again, Gracia’s defence cut apart, composure gone.
Choose Roca with a free header, nodded at Iversen and booted off the line. And then, in the last minute, choose Bamford at the far post, swinging a foot, the goal at his mercy, the ball raked improbably wide. Maybe offside but no time to check.
Choose the final whistle and a 1-1 draw, asking if a point is enough, if there is any way out in the games that are left, if this is a busted flush. Choose deflation and disillusionment, the third year of Premier League existence and the fear of rotting away at the end of it. Choose that feeling in the stomach, the churn of anxiety as the road threatens to run out. Choose the stress you know too well, the stress you have lived through a thousand times before, the stress that never truly leaves you.
Choose Leeds.