Leeds’ Daniel Farke spoilt for choice in midfield as Ilia Gruev finally hits form — The Athletic 19/1/24

By Phil Hay

Ilia Gruev to Leeds United was one of those deals everyone involved had to fight for.

Time was short late in last summer’s transfer window and the club he was about to leave, Werder Bremen, were reluctant sellers.

Losing Gruev, 23, was not part of the plan. They had developed him for eight years and he was starting to come to the fore. Besides, the offer from Leeds was an offer from the Championship, a level below Germany’s Bundesliga.

But a few things worked in Leeds’ favour.

For one, it was Leeds, which shone a different light on moving to play second-tier football. For two, Gruev had always aimed to move to England when the right opportunity presented itself.

Moreover, after almost a decade in Bremen — where he relocated alone as a raw teenager having left his homeland of Bulgaria — a change of scene was tempting. Once he laid his cards on the table and made his case, the only question was whether Leeds could meet the asking price.

The Gruev deal came in at £5million ($6.3m), one day before the September 1 transfer deadline, and for a while, there was no vivid demonstration of what Leeds’ money had bought.

Despite new manager Daniel Farke singling him out as a target and persuading the midfielder that the transfer would work for him, Gruev was shut out of Leeds’ midfield by players who got in before him — July signing Ethan Ampadu in particular.

He finally got his full debut on October 25 via the classic midweek-night-at-Stoke-City routine, looking like he had been thrown in cold as Leeds lost 1-0.

For a few weeks longer, he continued to hover in the background.

There was enough about his career and his reputation, though, to suggest Gruev would come good at some stage and be as much of an asset as a midfielder signed from Germany’s top flight should be in the Championship.

He had been promoted with Bremen in the summer of 2022 and then helped keep them up as they finished 13th out of 18 last season. He was a nine-cap Bulgaria international (he now has 14) who, playing in his best position as a No 6, had the skill set to fit into Farke’s tactical plan, in which midfield pivots with an eye for a pass are crucial.

And on Saturday, away against Cardiff City, it came together in Gruev’s strongest Leeds performance.

That 3-0 win in south Wales was an example of a day in which one team were as bad as their opponents were impressive, but the control shown by Farke’s side was summed up by Gruev emerging from it with a pass completion rate of 97.1 per cent. He misplaced just two of the 70 passes he attempted, and was resistant to any pressure Cardiff tried to put on him. In the middle, he was quietly dominant throughout.

Previously, Farke had looked to him to play as more of a No 8 — a role closer to that favoured by his father Iliya, a Bulgaria international himself in the late 1990s — but Ampadu dropping back to partner Joe Rodon in central defence opened up Gruev’s preferred slot, in front of the back four.

Performances such as Saturday’s were what Bremen believed they could get from Gruev as they brought him through their youth system, where he captained them at different academy levels.

He was 15 when he joined the four-time Bundesliga champions, picked up from a lower-league club, Rot-Weiss Erfurt, in the city where he grew up.

His father had moved to Germany to play for Duisburg shortly after Gruev was born in 2000 and Erfut, where Iliya ended his career six years later, played an early role in developing his boy as a modern defensive midfielder: not an enforcer or a hugely physical disruptor but someone who could control that area with positioning, technique and anticipation. Eight recoveries of possession against Cardiff showed his ability to win the ball.

He comes from a family who, because of his dad, were steeped in professional football. Iliya was a midfielder who played for Bulgaria 13 times and spent a large part of his career in his homeland before signing for Duisburg at age 30.

Gruev and his father are very close but competitive in a sporting sense, well-known for their healthy rivalry in anything they do together.

Gruev Snr became a coach after his retirement, managing Duisburg to promotion into the second division before a stint on the staff at Bremen while his son was cutting his teeth there. He was a hard, resilient type of footballer and his son is said to have many of those same traits, albeit while preferring a more deep-lying midfield position to the one his dad used to occupy.

For a year or so before his transfer to Leeds, Gruev was on Ajax’s radar — however, the 36-time Dutch champions never took the plunge and signed him.

The 2021-22 season was his breakthrough campaign, entering the first-team fold at Bremen as the club set about finding a way out of the second division, and starting 11 times among his 26 league appearances. He then made 18 league starts last season.

In Bremen’s eyes, having trained him for almost a decade and blooded him at senior level successfully, the ground had been laid for Gruev to become a major part of their long-term line-up, but Leeds’ late offer in August appealed to him and when Bremen were told he wanted to leave, they relented.

“He has chosen to continue his development at another club,” said their head of professional football, Clemens Fritz. “He said to us that he would like to transfer to a new club. We have granted the request and wish him all the best.”

Farke said when Gruev first arrived that he might need a little time to acclimatise.

The midfielder spoke good English, which made it easier to settle, but the Championship is not the same as the Bundesliga — different in pace and intensity — and Gruev had barely landed before he was flying off again for games against Iran and Montenegro in the season’s first international break.

The hierarchy in Farke’s midfield, in any case, had been established by strong displays during August from Ampadu and Archie Gray. Glen Kamara also signed the same day he did, adding more competition.

Gruev was philosophical about the need to wait and be patient but his contribution against Cardiff has now put him front and centre. As Farke sees it, the only problem is that he and Ampadu are very much the same player, rather than two who dovetail together perfectly. “This is exactly the position where we’ve never had problems,” Farke said on Saturday.

Even so, it is an advantage for Farke as Leeds head towards the final third of the season that he has players in his squad who are only starting to contribute significantly now.

Gruev follows Patrick Bamford in pushing himself forward over the past few weeks and, after that gradual introduction, the win at Cardiff, albeit against passive and limited opponents, showed why he and Leeds wanted this move.

Farke has staked a lot of chips on signing Ampadu from Chelsea but in Gruev, he has credible competition and talent to tap into.

“It was Ilia’s time to shine,” Farke said — and Gruev seems to know it.