At full-time there was a short rebuke for the fourth official and then some sarcastic waves and blown kisses for the home fans behind the dugout. Suffice to say that in Pep Guardiola’s mind the Premier League title race has begun.
This is what a night at Elland Road can do to you. It can fray your nerves and scramble your mind. In a sporting sense, it can leave you gasping for air.
That Guardiola and his Manchester City team managed to surface with three points at the end of this night of punch and counter punch says much about them.
This may not be a classic Guardiola City team. It still feels like a work in progress and — if the great Catalan sticks around — we may not see the best of it for another year or so.
But the one thing this team shares with those that have passed before it is guts and they were there for all to see in west Yorkshire.
A seam of courage and cussedness runs through this City team. It’s carried in the blood of players like Gianluigi Donnarumma, Bernardo Silva, Ruben Dias and Rodri. Erling Haaland was not here for this one. He is injured. But a warrior spirit endures and it may yet be enough to give title favourites Arsenal a touch of the heebie-jeebies between now and the finishing line.
Daniel Farke’s Leeds team don’t give anything away here in front of their own crowd. The minority of the home support that booed when play was stopped after 12 minutes so three City players could break their Ramadan fast may wish to do better next time but, apart from that, the Leeds fans played a fundamental part in an incredibly tight game. Leeds were better for the first 25 minutes and the final 15.
City rode their luck at both ends of the contest. In between, they managed to exert a modicum of control.
Their centre-half pairing of Dias and Marc Guehi was terrific for the most part while their playmaker, Rayan Cherki, possesses the kind of vision and instinct that cannot be taught. How he doesn’t start every week is a mystery to which Guardiola doubtlessly has a smart answer.
Ultimately, City won and at this stage of the season that is what matters. And now it’s over to Arsenal who face Chelsea on Sunday at the Emirates Stadium. If they fail to win, City will own the weekend. That’s the way it goes when winter gives way to spring in a tight title race.
Man for man, City probably aren’t quite a match for Arsenal. The London club maybe have a little more depth. But from this point on that won’t really matter. City — perhaps fuelled by that recent late win at Liverpool — are starting to roll rather ominously and here they managed to find just about enough.
Leeds are a willing, committed and well-drilled side. But they are more than that. They have good players who are improving and maybe that is embodied by their centre forward Dominic Calvert-Lewin.
The former Everton striker was a menace early on and had he taken one of two chances — delivered narrowly either side of each post — in the first 20 minutes then the story of this game may have been different.
Leeds swarmed all over City for 25 minutes. They were too quick for them and too aggressive.
City waited for the game to settle and it didn’t. They were rattled and, as such, prone to mistakes. On the touchline Guardiola looked on with a mix of what appeared to be agitation and terror.
The home team needed to score, though, and they didn’t. The game was always likely to change at some point. So when a couple more Leeds chances came and went, the crowd drew its breath and maybe the Leeds players did, too.
When that happened, City stepped forward rather inevitably to fill the void.
From that point on it was a different contest. Leeds slowly dropped back in to a 5-4-1 shape and City duly accepted the invitation to play a little higher up the field. It was from a spell of control if not incessant pressure that their goal eventually came.
Before that there were some scares for Leeds. Omar Marmoush had a cross shot saved while Leeds goalkeeper Karl Darlow palmed away a Nico O’Reilly header when the young England star should have scored.
Leeds still worried City when they broke but they no longer had a grip on the game. And when Cherki played Rayan Ait-Nouri clear with a lovely pass in the third minute of first-half injury time, he crossed low for Antoine Semenyo to score from six yards.
City didn’t particularly deserve their lead but at half-time Leeds may have asked themselves how many saves Donnarumma had been asked to make. Not many.
Four minutes in to the second half, the big Italian had cause to be concerned as Calvert-Lewin took aim from an angle. This time, City full-back Matheus Nunes got across to make a fabulous block.That proved to be a rather isolated second-half threat as once again City largely controlled the game.
Darlow’s save from a Guehi header with just less than 20 minutes left was the best of the game but Farke reintroduced some late energy with brave substitutions and when Dutch forward Joel Piroe rose to meet an 86th-minute corner with his first touch, a header looked to have won his team a point until it bounced the wrong side of the post.
The denouement was rather chaotic. Farke was sent off for something he said to referee Peter Bankes at full-time while Guardiola claimed he had been waving to his family in the main stand. He wasn’t being entirely honest about that.