Farke said Leeds beating Bristol City was ‘crucial’ – but can they catch up? – The Athletic 9/10/23

By Phil Hay

There was very little room at Daniel Farke’s Friday press conference for anything other than Joel Piroe.

Germans, stereotypically or otherwise, are renowned for their efficient manner and football is big on efficiency too, so Farke did his bit for both: to summarise, ‘if I give you chapter and verse on Piroe’s role at Leeds United now, you need never ask me about it again.’

But earlier in the briefing, and buried beneath that monologue, was a more telling comment from Farke, or one that was as revealing about a different matter entirely.

Leeds were shaping up to play Bristol City at home, a bread-and-butter Championship fixture if ever there was one, and Farke — one of those managers who tries not to track the league table too closely — made a point of giving it broader significance. “The game is crucial,” he said. “We need to be ‘on it’.”

A touch of equivocation followed as Farke insisted he was “never addicted to a certain position after 11 games” but it was fair to deduce that with the season now into October, his mind was drawn to the importance of hanging in at the sharp end of the league.

After speaking about Piroe for fully 13 minutes, he described himself as being in game-mode. His remark about Bristol City found him in promotion-mode: a coach who could see how the 2023-24 Championship was shaping up and was pondering the challenge of his team staying in touch.

England’s second division never fully settles before the leaves start to fall, but it would be remiss of Farke or any other manager with designs on getting promoted from it to ignore what is going on at the very top.

In the 20-season Championship era, Leicester City’s current haul of 30 points from their first 11 fixtures is almost unmatched, save for Sheffield United in 2005-06. Over that same period, no other club would have been in the automatic promotion places as the table stands today. The pace is fierce, the chasing pack realise that and Farke has been around this block before — enough to know when a good advantage risks turning into an insurmountable gap.

One place below Leicester sit Ipswich Town, who are perpetuating the idea that the impetus of one promotion can generate another. Theirs, after 10 matches, matched the best-ever start for a side newly up into the Championship, a joint record with the 1984-85 version of Oxford United. Ipswich’s head coach, Kieran McKenna, wasn’t born when Oxford were surging towards that second-tier title.

And so, for Leeds, on 13 points after last Saturday’s defeat away to Southampton, this week was about rudimentary mathematics: contest two home matches, win them both and keep the margins relatively in check.

As such, some additional thought went into Farke’s line-up for Bristol City.

The team sheet left everyone guessing, with no obvious right-back in it. That duty fell to Archie Gray, who had played there in England youth fixtures and who, like other midfielders at Elland Road, has been coached by Farke to fall in and cover whenever Leeds’ full-backs launch themselves forward; played there for England but never for Leeds’ first team — not that anyone would have known from what followed.

It was a clever call made without endless time to prepare and one visitors City had not envisaged, expecting that the quick-and-slick Sam Bell might have Luke Ayling to go at or, failing that, Ethan Ampadu.

Gray’s anticipation and recovery runs kept Bell on a leash in open play. An hour in, Bell switched to the other side of the pitch to see if he could wring more loose change out of an equally stingy and savvy Sam Byram. Leeds were 2-1 up by then, on the way to their second home victory in four days.

Dan James scored the first of their goals, getting on the end of a Georginio Rutter cross after the latter bent the laws of physics by aiming a shot over the crossbar from a few yards out — a chance to fascinate the xG fanatics. It is as if the Frenchman is using the odd, unflattering miss to make the opposition feel better about a level of skill which is trolling the Championship when it comes alive. And naturally, Piroe banged in Leeds’ second shortly after half-time; a fifth goal in eight appearances for the club, which neatly vindicated Farke’s claim that “I know strikers”.

In between came a cheap header for Kal Naismith, turned in from a corner in first-half stoppage-time with Farke’s defence asleep and Glen Kamara stationary in front of him.

As City looked for another way back in after Piroe’s goal, Crysencio Summerville’s shot was wafted against the crossbar by Max O’Leary and other Leeds chances went begging, leaving the door ajar and almost taking a pound of flesh when Byram cleared a flicked header off the line. It would make Farke happy to see Leeds make life easy for themselves. But when have Leeds ever done that?

Six points at Elland Road from games against two eminently beatable sides, though, was the right haul at the right time.

Leicester won again on Saturday, the leaders storming onto 30 points. Ipswich won again on Saturday, close behind on 28. Their margins to Leeds are 11 and nine respectively and deficits like those can only be allowed to get so much bigger before the pursuit requires binoculars and spirals out of control.

Whatever Farke thought he could accomplish this season, he would not have envisaged being squeezed out of the automatic promotion picture rapidly. Hence the Bristol City match being viewed as crucial.

At the end of Friday’s spiel about Piroe, Farke threw in another choice comment.

“I’ve won this league twice,” the former Norwich City manager said. “I know what is necessary as a team.” And, more to the point, what is necessary in terms of results to have any chance of that — a demand which had him thinking out loud. The season’s second international break is here. Leeds are fifth and just about in Ipswich’s slipstream. “I’m very happy,” Farke said.

Piroe’s strike was mentioned afterwards and his reaction to that was gentle.

Farke joked that he was “not sitting here saying, ‘I told you so’.” But there was a touch of that in what was said on Friday: his job, his call, his neck. And perhaps a justified plea to remember that in the Championship, he has cashed these cheques before.