Forest 2-0 Leeds (S & P)

You know that sick feeling you get before a big match? Well, it usually goes away when your team has taught Dirty Leeds a lesson in how to keep your nerve when the pressure's on. But this time it didn't. It came back later when I read what the press had to say about the match.

According to the Mail, "Sixteen long years have passed since Leeds last adorned the Premier League", as opposed to the twenty one short years of their opponents, whoever they were. And I don't remember Leeds ever "adorning" anything, to be honest. Ten of those years, the Mail continues, were spent in "the purgatory of The Championship, the realm that promises elevation to a higher state but only after sufficient purification of the soul." This is football journalism at its best, coating a lump of everyday obviousness in a syrupy sauce of mediaeval bollo'ks, because this, you see, is not just a match report; this a classical lament for the demise of something quite epic. This is a Marks and Spencer's match report.

But I digress. The Mail eventually admits that Leeds were beaten by a team called Forest, that Forest may have deserved the three points (but only because Leeds were so nervous), that the atmosphere at Forest was pulsating, and that Tyler Walker was Des Walker's son, but all these things are presented as debris scattered around the explosive disintegration of Leeds' hopes.

The Sun treats the match in very much the same way. "Marcelo Bielsa’s boys had won just one of their last five Championship matches ahead of this tricky test by the banks of the Trent – their 11 point lead at the top of the table in December already a distant memory," it informs us, the "tricky" bit being a cute reference to one of Forest's nicknames, one hopes, buried in another shovelful of faeces about Marcelo Bielsa's boys. "Leeds were being all Leedsy" it says, describing the "frayed nerves" of their "long suffering supporters" who needed a "big statement to restore confidence".

The Telegraph's report appears to have been written by a London based pot collector. "After this," it says, "the latest defeat for the erstwhile runaway leaders Leeds United, the top of the Championship now resembles the Harrods crockery department on the first day of the sales. Packed, tense and nervy, scrapping for the spoils, it is the most intensely competitive league in the game." I wouldn't know, I've never been to a Harrods crockery sale. I did go to Harrods once, but all I could afford was a key ring. Anyway, our pot collector does eventually arrive at the main event. "Though inevitably in the mayhem there are victims," he says, conjuring up images of posh women brawling over majolica casseroles. "For Marcelo Bielsa, the Leeds manager, defeat brings further evidence that his team might be sinking at precisely the wrong moment. This result means they have now won just once in their last nine fixtures." There, you see, the Harrods bit was just a diversionary tactic. In the end, of course, it's all about Leeds.

The Guardian (or Observer) journalist Is obviously writing a novel about Leeds, hence the three long starting paragraphs about the flaws in Marcelo Bielsa's methods, containing flights of literary fancy such as "his teams can play football of great beauty but it is a doomed beauty". What? The report goes on to suggest that Bielsa's intensity leaves his players mentally exhausted, and that more pressure is applied by Leeds' perception of themselves as a major club. It quotes Bielsa as saying "I have to understand it is me who has to find the solutions. Pressure for the players and me doesn’t exist. We are professional." In other words, the article, like Bielsa's words, is just a big bowl of drivel soup which makes you want to retch.

Now I know what you're going to say. You're going to talk about "flying under the radar", aren't you? "Let them concentrate on Leeds if they want to," you'll say. "Nothing can change the fact that we won." Well, that's not good enough any more, so here's what really happened...

Cont...