Mid-table safety is like a glass of room-temperature water, perfectly acceptable, but ultimately we’d rather have a flaming sambuca served from the navel of a 19 year old cheerleader, whilst simultaneously singing Marching on Together and firing a shotgun into an effigy of Luke Varney. You can claw for sensationalist headlines and micro-drama all you like, but a mid-table stalemate against Forest (with both teams seemingly content with a point) isn’t exciting. Not that I’m disappointed, I’m just hoping for a more exciting drinks menu.

In December I’d have given Ken Bates’ privates a gentle fondle if it guaranteed Leeds’ Championship survival. Not that it would, that old goat’s scrotum isn’t magic, it’s just an indication of how desperate we were for a result. Languishing at the bottom of the league, unable to buy a win and dancing perilously with the reality of League One football. It is now mid-March and after the Forest game we are 14 points from relegation and 14 points from the playoff. Comfortable, safe and boring.

You see, Leeds isn’t a club that happily exists in mediocrity. For a start, our fans are mental. The good kind of mental, though, in that we thrive on drama. With our backs to the wall and fighting for survival, trying to scalp a bigger side in the FA Cup or trying to win everything to get promoted – these are the things that we live for. Now that we’re essentially safe from relegation and equally safe from the excitement of chasing promotion, what remains is a pressure-free sequence of pointless fixtures with an increased focus on next season. I don’t remember the mid-season consolidation plot-arc in Roy of the Rovers…

The match

With baby Byram and Rudy carrying knocks, Leeds opted to remain unchanged and play that strange squad again. You know the one, where no-one plays in their actual position.

Berardi as LB, Wootton as RB, Charlie Taylor as LM, Steve Morison as RM… Very few of those would consider it their natural position, but it kinda works. Apart from when it doesn’t. I’m looking at you, Steve.

The match was as flat as you’d expect, both teams working acceptably through midfield but lacking options in the final third. Both defenses kept things relatively tidy, both goalkeepers were fairly quiet. Both teams had about 50% possession, both had 11 shots, neither could finish. It wasn’t a classic by any stretch. With almost 31,000 people in attendance it’s not a match-day many will tell their grandkids about. But that doesn’t make it a bad result.

You see, Forest are a good side. A side we have only beaten once in the last 6 meetings (a 2-1 win at home in 2012) – otherwise we’ve conceded 17 goals. That means Leeds have conceded an average of 2.83 goals per game when playing Forest. So you see, a clean sheet against them is no bad thing at all. They’re up in 9th and have scored 20 more goals this campaign than we have. In the 5 games prior to meeting Leeds they had won 4 of them scoring 12 goals along the way.

So for us to keep things tidy and force a stalemate is a point of pride, even if it’s not the stuff of headlines. Where we clung on against Boro, manically clearing the ball from every cross where a goal was inevitable if the match went on long enough, Forest didn’t really exert the same kind of pressure. It was all quite calm, quite managed, quite sedate. It was a positive result because we’ve historically been an appalling team defensively and yet the Bamba/Bellusci partnership is statistically a clean-sheet machine.

We had a couple of chances to win it, too, notably when Charlie Taylor found himself free on the edge of the six yard box and opted to punt the ball straight at the keeper rather than anything more deft (or squaring it to the frustrated Sharp). But it wasn’t to be. Morison isn’t a winger – and on the basis of his goal-record and shot that creeped out for a throw-in, he isn’t a striker either. Taylor is a bright player, a good prospect, but he’s not an attacking midfielder. There is merit in playing him there against a strong side, certainly, but he’s not a goal-scorer or an architect. For all Sharp’s graft he couldn’t engineer a goal and short of another magical moment from Mowatt, it just wasn’t going to happen.

And I’m not unhappy with that. To be a good side you need to draw games as well as win them, against strong sides you need to nullify their threat and I thought we did that against Forest. We were perhaps unlucky not to snatch a goal, but ultimately a draw was fair.

Time to build

With this season fading like Ross McCormack’s hopes of Premiership football it’s increasingly important to focus on next season. Andrew Umbers stated that contract negotiations would begin in the Summer to avoid detracting from the work to be done this campaign, but with all due respect Andrew, now is the right time. We’re not going up, we’re unlikely to go down, so it’s time to assess what this squad needs to compete next year. If you get important players on long contracts it means that our Summer can be focused on adding quality rather than trying to retain it. It means there’s no moving ground during the close-season, the lads know they’re valued above any additions you might make.

It just makes sense. That way we know what places we need to add depth to, what positions we need a first-team option in and what business needs to be done in the transfer market.

It’s also time to blood a few of the other players. Lewis Walters, Kalvin Phillips and Chris Dawson are lurking on the periphery of the first team. It’s time to rotate them in during these final weeks, ascertain whether they’ll remove the need to add certain external talent to the squad. Montenegro, too, is consistently scoring for the development squad, so is perhaps worth looking at again.

What doesn’t help, Andrew, is uncertainty. Uncertainty around our ownership, around Lewis Cook, around Sam Byram, around Neil Redfearn. I don’t like the way that Neil has to cautiously address his future at the club; he needs to be retained. Unless someone comes in with hundreds of millions of pounds to spend, our most viable chance for success comes through leveraging our academy and Neil is the man to do that. There’s no reason to believe that there’s not a Premiership squad of lads here somewhere, so reward the ones we know about, try the others and build. Build. Build. Don’t take liberties with our future by wanting to compartmentalise the contract situation into an arbitrary period in the future.

Address it now and ride this wave of optimism into next season.

But then this is Leeds and we don’t do things the sensible way. Perhaps that’s why we’re more likely to open the absinthe and drink it off the bosom of some 21 year old beauty than have a quiet cup of tea and discuss the merits of water meters. I should perhaps refrain from the young girl references, lest I add credibility to the Jimmy Saville chants.

I tell you what though, I’m looking forward to Fulham away. Give us a wave, Ross. Do you have Luke Varney’s number, Ross? I have a few things to send him.

On and on.