Leeds United squad depth: Farke ‘pretty happy’ – but two problem positions remain - The Athletic 6/9/23

By Phil Hay

This, Daniel Farke keeps saying, is not the squad as he imagined it eight or nine weeks ago. At Leeds United, from the opening of the transfer window to the very end of it, who on earth could say for sure?

Leeds have experienced very few summers in which so many things were subject to change or so much of that change beyond their control. It started with relegation and finished on Friday night with deal sheets scraping through the last of their transactions. Only in the hour after the transfer deadline did Farke have definitive clarity about his playing staff.

Friday, in many ways, was the best demonstration of how much the pieces moved around the board: Luis Sinisterra driving out of Leeds’ training ground and telling supporters he was staying, when in reality he was about to catch a plane to the south coast and sign for Bournemouth, while Jaidon Anthony travelled to Bournemouth’s team hotel with little or no idea that he would be the makeweight in Sinisterra’s move. Anthony ate dinner with everyone else, contemplating Brentford away the next day. Then the wheels began to turn.

The 20-man squad picked by Farke for Saturday’s goalless draw with Sheffield Wednesday showed how late some of Leeds’ business had been done. Anthony was present but not able to feature having joined a matter of hours earlier. Ilia Gruev, signed from Werder Bremen, was waiting for certain documents to be processed and clearance to arrive.

The churn of the window spoke for itself: nine signings in, double figures out. “I wouldn’t have predicted the squad would look like this,” Farke said. “But it’s the reality right now and I’m pretty happy.”

Where, then, has three months of trading and counter-trading left Leeds and how well has their recruitment matched what Farke expected after his appointment as manager?

The club had certain boxes they intended to tick after relegation, from reducing their wage bill to creating a team with more of a domestic track record and Championship feel. Cutting salaries, as it turned out, was not especially difficult: relegation clauses slashed most wages by at least 50 per cent and a slew of first-team players departed anyway, many via loans that required any club to pick up all of a target’s wages for the 2023-24 season.

It has left the bill at Elland Road closer to an acceptable Championship outlay but is still well above the level of an average second-tier club. When Leeds climbed out of the division in 2020, they did it with a wage bill of about £78million ($98m) — a figure this season’s expenditure is likely to sit very close to.

The club succeeded in creating a different spine in their team, too. For three years in the Premier League, United were drawn repeatedly to continental markets, dabbling infrequently domestically. This summer, that would change. It was not that they were focused on landing English or British footballers specifically, but they tried to play the percentages by drawing up recruitment plans that centred on players who were either proven in the Championship or would be safe bets there.

Farke took a keen interest in Germany’s Bundesliga, too, and made it plain to Leeds that their strategy would have to align with his — in other words, he would dictate the ultimate direction of any squad-building — but there was little on which he and the club did not agree.

In total, nine signings came in. Six of them — Karl Darlow, Sam Byram, Joel Piroe, Joe Rodon, Djed Spence and Jaidon Anthony — had played in the Championship before and four had been promoted from it. Gruev was a solitary overseas arrival, though not the only foreign target.

Farke liked some of what he thought he could get from Germany and would have taken Nadiem Amiri from Bayer Leverkusen had that negotiation not become comically acrimonious. Glen Kamara had years at Rangers behind him, including a title-winning season and European campaigns, the best of them a run to the Europa League final in 2022. Ethan Ampadu looked high-calibre and low-risk, an international midfielder who has impressed in Leeds’ initial league matches.

Recruitment at Elland Road has given the squad Championship knowhow and, through a pretty fraught and fractious process, a dressing room that is largely free of players whose willingness to stay at Leeds had either dropped alarmingly or evaporated completely. Willy Gnonto is alone in having set his mind on a transfer and failing to secure one and Farke appears to have brought that situation under control.

Leeds anticipated Illan Meslier would leave and that the France Under-21 international would want to leave, but interest from Celta Vigo did not amount to a move and five games into the league season, he is in position as Farke’s No 1, ahead of Darlow. Detachment no longer appears to be an issue in the dressing room, nor is talent lacking. The potential thorn in Farke’s side will be depth and options in two specific positions.

The summer at Elland Road would not be the summer without some debate about left-back. Leeds had Charlie Taylor on their list of targets — United have never filled the hole properly since he left Elland Road for Burnley on a free transfer in 2017 (although Ezgjan Alioski was as good as it got and a regular, energetic presence in Marcelo Bielsa’s tenure as head coach).

Interest in Taylor was doomed to fail because Burnley did not have the cover to let him go. Two loan enquiries for Luke Thomas also yielded no result since Leicester City were not about to lend him to another team who might rival them for promotion to the Championship. The absence of a new left-back arriving at Leeds leaves Farke with three options there, two of whom are injured but close to returning.

On Saturday, against Sheffield Wednesday, Jamie Shackleton stepped into the breach and did a good turn for Farke, but it is unlikely the manager plans for Shackleton to rack up minutes on the left side of defence. Leo Hjelde started the season in that role but the 20-year-old was quickly dropped. Sam Byram stepped in ably but suffered an adductor strain away at Ipswich Town and his injury record was something Leeds considered seriously before signing him as a free agent.

Junior Firpo has been missing since pre-season and there is probably no player at Leeds with more public scepticism about him. Farke, evidently, has choices at left-back. What remains to be seen is whether those players have the quality or durability to keep that area of the line-up in order for 41 games.

For the No 10 role, the task is more about establishing who is likely to be most effective there. Though Amiri’s proposed move from Leverkusen hit the wall in circumstances that begged questions about his character, the Germany international was tailor-made for an attacking midfield slot, blessed with the creativity needed to break through compact defences such as the one they faced in the 0-0 draw against Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday. Something like a peak Pablo Hernandez would do the trick. Amiri would also have been very good value at around £5million.

Farke sees Crysencio Summerville more as a No 10 than as a winger. United’s manager has also tried Piroe there in the past two matches, to good effect at Ipswich but with far less impact against Wednesday. Farke said at the weekend that Piroe’s tendency to come deep in search of possession made him suited to operating there, but Piroe is regarded far more as a No 9 after two years of prolific goalscoring at Swansea City. Farke also hinted he might look for Georginio Rutter to drop back from time to time and become more of a secondary forward, but it is arguably the position where Farke has most to do in deciding who fits best.

Elsewhere, though, Leeds have depth in a pool that Farke did not want to be excessively big. There were shades of Bielsa when he said players he didn’t rate or who did not fit his style were best moving on, even if it reduced the numbers available to him. For the first time in a long time, United have multiple candidates to fill the centre of midfield, helped by the late arrivals of Gruev and Kamara. The club withdrew Archie Gray from England Under-19 duty this week, reasoning that the 17-year-old needed his workload controlled after his sudden surge into first-team football, but the likelihood that Gray keeps his place when United resume at Millwall does not alter the fact Farke has adequate ways of replacing him.

There are numbers at centre-back when everyone is fit, too, helped by Leeds resisting interest from Club Bruges in Pascal Struijk during the window. Right-back has become a straight battle between Luke Ayling and Djed Spence after the latter’s loan move from Tottenham Hotspur. Spence was the Championship’s best right-back when he last appeared in the division with Nottingham Forest. There are wingers who can switch positions and, between Piroe, Rutter and a soon-to-return Patrick Bamford, forwards who should score goals at this level.

The biggest shift for Leeds might be that in most areas of their team, Farke is trying to establish the strongest option rather than settle on the least worst. After two years of contending with too much that did not work, it was no great surprise that the cost of extended under-performance was relegation.

Farke’s squad is not bulletproof. There are potential weaknesses. But right up until deal-sheet territory, the resources in front of him were far from certain and on that basis, he will settle for the hand he was dealt.