The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Sport Saturday
Joseph’s instant impact saves Leeds run
If Leeds United do finish in the Championship’s automatic promotion spots, they make look upon this visit to Watford as the moment the planets truly aligned for them.
Substitute Mateo Joseph’s bundled goal brought them late parity and kept them in second place in the Championship, albeit just a point ahead of Leicester City who have a game in hand. Leeds scarcely deserved it but few will remember at the end of the season and, as the old cliche has it, playing badly and sneaking a point is the mark of the promotion-bound.
“I’ll take a point all day long,” said Daniel Farke, the Leeds manager. “We were not at our best in the first half, but we spoke about a few things at half-time and found our rhythm and confidence in the second.”
Leeds can, though, claim resilience. Down and seemingly out, with five minutes remaining, their most effective player, Crysencio Summerville, sped down the left and crossed low. Junior Firpo’s dummy wrongfooted the home defence and, with his very first touch, Joseph’s effort was blocked by Watford defender Ryan Porteous. It ricocheted off Jamal Lewis, then off Joseph and then into goal. Pretty? No. Crucial? Probably and the psychological fillip it brought may prove as galvanising as the point itself.
Summerville had scored Leeds’s first, a strike worthy of any top tier in Europe, but until Joseph’s scrappy equaliser that was as good as it got.
Leeds were startled by the vim and vigour of a Watford hovering harmlessly in mid- table. Indeed, the first half of interim head coach Tom Cleverley’s first home game was the high point of a stuttering season.
“We were controlled, structured and brave for 65 minutes,” said Cleverley, who labelled Summerville as the best player in the Championship, “but that intensity takes its toll.”
Longer term, Cleverley’s possibly temporary appointment suggests the Pozzo family’s scattergun approach to finding Watford managers may finally be on hold.
The home side would tire in the second half, but Leeds still laboured. In the sober light of day, sole striker Patrick Bamford was isolated, they were swamped in midfield and distinctly rickety in defence, yet they remain undefeated in the league in 2024.
Watford swept ahead just after the half-hour mark when the vivacious Yaser Asprilla sped down the left and crossed low, only for Emmanuel Dennis’s ferocious drive to be foiled by a splendid Illan Meslier save. Alas for the Leeds goalkeeper, the ball fell to Vakoun Bayo, who volleyed home gleefully.
Leeds levelled when Glen Kamara found Summerville on the left. The Dutchman cut in, left a slew of defenders behind him and curled a beauty past Watford keeper Daniel Bachmann from the corner of the penalty area. “Watford tried to provoke and scare him, but how he handled that situation was mature. A world-class goal and a world-class assist was like karma,” Farke said.
Just when it seemed Leeds would cruise, they floundered. Edo Kayembe found Dennis on the right. He cut in as effervescently as Summerville had, led Liam Cooper a merry dance and curled his strike past Meslier from the corner of the penalty area.
Keen to exorcise the demons of Wales’s penalty shoot-out defeat in Cardiff on Tuesday, Dan James grew into the contest and began to get the upper hand over Lewis as Watford’s intensity ebbed, even before Dennis hobbled off just before the hour.
Indeed, when Asprilla was withdrawn, Leeds sensed the game and their unbeaten run was salvageable. On came Joseph and with him, unlikely salvation. One point could have become three after the equaliser but for Bachmann’s wonderful point-blank save from another substitute, Jadon Anthony.
“If he’d scored, I’d have danced on the table,” claimed Farke. The time for dancing on tables may not be too far away.