Jesse Marsch saved his job by doing the near-impossible: winning at Anfield

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Jesse Marsch needed a victory to save his Leeds job, but this probably wasn’t the game he had circled on his calendar.

Leeds stunned Liverpool 2-1 at Anfield on Saturday, the club’s first league win since August 21 and a result that got them out of the relegation zone.

There were better chances to get three points for Marsch in an eight-game winless league run: last week against Fulham and the previous week at Leicester come to mind as recent examples.

But both of those games ended in defeat, with Leeds fans calling for Marsch’s head and chanting for his predecessor Marcelo Bielsa. It was getting ugly.

Liverpool, for all intents and purposes, doesn’t lose at home. Its last home defeat prior to Saturday was in March 2021. Before that, the club had a 68-game unbeaten home run snapped in January 2021.

But Crysencio Summerville scored a dramatic winner in the 89th minute in front of the away fans, giving Marsch a stay of execution. He was pretty happy.

It’s hard to blame him. Leeds was on a rotten run of results but has actually been playing fairly respectfully. The club actually had a +1.4 expected goals difference heading into the game at Anfield, suggesting it would soon start getting the rub of the green.

On Saturday that luck finally arrived, though it did take an absolutely massive performance from goalkeeper Illan Meslier and a fluky early goal from Rodrigo Moreno, who was given an empty-net tap-in thanks to a mix-up between Joe Gomez and Alisson.

“I’ve believed in this group,” Marsch told Sky Sports after the game. “We shouldn’t be in this situation if you look at the metrics, but we are. Now we’ve got something like this and now we have to stay strong.”

Whatever criticism you could level at Marsch, it’s clear that his players are still playing for him. With that and a little more luck, he could just keep his job for the long term.

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