Leeds United 3-3 Liverpool FC — Crisis? What Crisis? Just a week ago, we were staring down the barrel of a gun. Three matches against last season’s top four. Farke was a dead man walking. Relegation looked inevitable.
Fast forward to Sunday morning, and we’ve just picked up 4 points from a possible 9 against Manchester City, Chelsea FC, and Liverpool FC.
This isn’t just significant because we were expected to lose all three; it signals a 180-degree shift in this team’s mentality. After the grim defeats to “lowly” opposition like Nottingham Forest and Burnley FC, the form book said we were relegation fodder. But we were unlucky to lose to that late Foden strike against City; we battered Chelsea (3-1), and last night, we refused to die against the champions.
A Game of Two Halves
The match started with Leeds actually looking for an early opener—we had two clear sighters—but Liverpool then took control. For large chunks of the first half, we were pinned back. It was the best football I’ve seen played against us since the Arsenal mauling at the start of the season. Their fluid triangles and pinpoint switches left us constantly defending, but crucially, we did not buckle.
The referee, Anthony Taylor, seemed determined to make himself the main character, blowing for soft fouls and generally earning his badge as a “Liverpool player in disguise.” But we went in at 0-0.
Then, the second half started, and absolute hell broke loose.
Within five minutes of the restart, we were 2-0 down. Rodon, usually a rock, made a schoolboy error that Hugo Ekitike punished ruthlessly. Minutes later, we were caught ball watching, leaving Ekitike unmarked to tap in a second. Elland Road fell silent. All the hard work undone in 300 seconds.
The Farke Masterclass
In the past, heads would have dropped. But Farke didn’t wait until the 70th minute to throw on more attacking options – Gnonto, Aaronson, and Tanaka, and the game turned on its head.
Gnonto was electric. He ran at them with no fear and was eventually chopped down by Konate. The ref waved it away initially (classic), but VAR rightly intervened. Dominic Calvert-Lewin stepped up and scored.
Suddenly, the atmosphere shifted from despair to a bearpit. Two minutes later, subs Gnonto and Aaronson combined beautifully to tee up Anton Stach, who rifled a peach of a finish past Alisson. 2-2.
The Sting in the Tail
Just as we looked like winning it, Liverpool pulled off a cunning attack. Their quality showed for a split second, and Dominik Szoboszlai slid one home to make it 3-2 with ten minutes left. It felt cruel. It had the Man City result written all over it—a valiant effort for zero points.
But this Leeds team has found fire in its belly.
With nine minutes of stoppage time added, the fans roared them on for one last push. After Lucas Perri pulled off a fingertip save at one end to keep us in it, we won a corner at the death.
90+6 minutes. Stach whipped it in to the back post, and there he was—Ao Tanaka, ghosting in to smash home his second goal off the bench in two matches.
Cue pandemonium. The noise that erupted in the stadium was the twelfth man in action. The Liverpool fans, who had been threatening to spill onto the pitch earlier, were silenced.
Goliath crushers
The media after the match was preoccupied with Liverpool’s drop in performance – and Salah’s petulant behaviour in front of camera, telling reporters he’s been “thrown under the bus” after being dropped to the bench again. This was disingenuous to Leeds who had all the work to do to turn around a 2-0 deficit. On the one hand Liverpool had two players on the pitch during the match that were each bought for over £100M – more than the cost of Leeds’s ten players brought in (Isak in particular was barracked by Leeds fan and made no impact as a sub. So we certainly expected a battering.) On the other hand, Elland Road has become a fortress and it was a bearpit in the ground last night.
A firm foundation
Six goals in the second half, a VAR drama, and a stoppage-time equaliser. It was mental to watch, but it proved one thing: Farke has found his mojo. We are now 16th, three points clear of the drop, but looking up rather than down.
Man of the Match: Anton Stach. A goal, an assist for the winner, and he ran the midfield show in the second half. A colossus.
