How Leeds will tackle five games and 2,000 miles in 15 days — The Athletic 31/1/24

By Phil Hay

We have arrived at 2024’s Green Football Weekend, the annual juncture where the sport tries to give the impression it is paying attention to climate change.

Leeds United’s designated ‘green game’ is away against Bristol City on Friday, a night match that finishes after the last trains from Bristol will have long since departed.

UK broadcaster Sky Sports opted to televise this fixture and switch it from the default slot on Saturday afternoon, rendering post-match public transport options for away fans looking to make the 212-mile (330km) journey back to Yorkshire minimal to non-existent.

Still, it’s the thought that counts.

Aside from environmental issues, Friday evening at Ashton Gate encapsulates the schedule Leeds are about to wade into. It’s a fortnight unlike many at the club can remember on the domestic front.

Leeds’ squad will cover 2,000 miles in 15 days, with the trip to Bristol City, another to Swansea City (a 520-mile round trip) and two to Plymouth Argyle (640-mile round trips). Five games anywhere crammed into such a short period would be a test of stamina at any point in a season but these long-haul journeys to the south west of England and south Wales, including an unwanted FA Cup replay with Argyle, are falling at a time when the Championship’s promotion race is delicately balanced.

Even without that extra trip to Devon, February promised to be an intense month, but Saturday’s 1-1 draw in the FA Cup’s fourth round left Daniel Farke looking at the following rat race: Bristol City away on Friday, Argyle away in the cup on Tuesday (February 6), Rotherham United at home on February 10, Swansea away on February 13, Argyle away on February 17. Three of those are night games, while that final meeting with Argyle has been moved to a 12.30pm Saturday kick-off, again to allow for a live broadcast on Sky Sports.

“We’re Leeds United,” manager Daniel Farke said of his team’s upcoming workload, “so even if we have to go on a bicycle, we go on a bicycle.”

Needless to say, Leeds will not be going by bicycle.

The club are planning to fly to each of those four long away trips in an attempt to limit travelling time and optimise post-match recovery.

Some in fitness circles question whether taking planes rather than coaches lowers the risk of injuries but nobody disagrees that fewer hours of sleep can be detrimental for footballers, or that late arrivals home after long trips by road tend to increase fatigue.

Though Farke made light of questions about the schedule in front of him, he will now be in the thick of logistical preparation. It was at his insistence that Leeds pivoted from travelling by train to fly to London for September’s noon Sunday kick-off against Millwall — a game his team went on to win 3-0.

Farke is bound to rotate for the replay at Home Park next week but the glut of outings and the demands of covering so much distance in just over two weeks will still require close monitoring of the stress loads on his players. Farke has a specialist head of performance in his backroom staff, Chris Domogalla, and Leeds had worked in advance to map out the run of matches in front of them — only to see that draw with Argyle toss an extra cup tie into the equation.

Callum Walsh, a fitness and conditioning expert who worked as head of performance for Huddersfield Town and Turkish side Alanyaspor either side of a role as head of sports science at Newcastle United, says the decision to fly to these matches should work to Farke’s advantage by helping to maintain fairly regular sleep patterns, limiting the loss of training time to recuperation and recovery.

Walsh says: “Travelling to a game by plane or bus — obviously one takes longer if you’re travelling a long distance but that doesn’t necessarily have a huge impact on performance. What’s more important is what happens after a game finishes in Bristol on a Friday night or Plymouth on a Tuesday night.

“If you’re getting out of Plymouth at 11pm and travelling (to Leeds) by coach, you’re not getting home and into bed until maybe five in the morning. I don’t want to come across as ‘woe is me’ but it messes with your sleep routine and I know from experience that it not only wipes out the day when you get home, but you feel like you’ve been hit by a train the next day too. It can massively impact the 48 hours after a game.

“Flying gets you back so much sooner, which means players are in their beds at a relatively normal time — because even after a home game, there’s always that adrenaline dump which stops most of them from going to sleep for a little while afterwards.

“A lot of regenerative processes take place when you’re sleeping. A normal cycle is really important when it comes to fatigue and players’ mental state, and you’ve seen English clubs starting to stay over (on the continent) after European away games, not travelling back immediately.

“The advantage Leeds have over some other clubs in the Championship is that they’ve got the budget to fly to games. Some clubs wouldn’t be able to do that, so the schedule would be even harder. I know Chris (Domogalla) well and they’ll have been planning for this period a long way in advance. Nothing about the preparation will be last-minute.”

Very few, if any, among the Leeds supporters aiming to attend these matches will have the same luxuries or choices.

The weeks to come are a huge organisational minefield in which the fanbase will tussle with awkward kick-off times, unreliable train services and whatever the UK’s winter weather throws at them.

Battle lines between Leeds and Sky TV were drawn a long time ago, as a result of the fact that the club’s ability to draw a big armchair viewing audience in the Championship made them the subjects of endless fixture rearrangements. Such disruption was raised at one of their most recent supporter advisory board meetings and Sky is in the habit of being targeted with choice chants about its coverage at any Leeds game it opts to broadcast.

Dave Whitmore, a self-employed decorator, has followed Leeds since the 1970s and has not missed a game since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic. He insists he will be at all four of these long away trips, including that cup tie in Plymouth.

Whitmore estimates that those excursions will require him to take six days off work and, factoring in tickets, travel and hotel stays, expects the cost in pounds to run well into four figures. A train back to Leeds from Plymouth after the Championship game there on February 17 leaves roughly two hours after the final whistle. “That gives us a good chance of making it,” he says, “but if there’s any problem with it, or if there are cancellations, we’ve had it.

“But that’s part of the problem. The trains have been trouble for a long time. There were strikes when we went to Peterborough (a 2pm Sunday kick-off in the FA Cup’s previous round last month), so we ended up having to travel to Grantham and grab taxis from there (to cover the remaining 30-plus miles). Then you’ve got the kick-off times. You’ve heard the chants and you hear that Sky don’t like them, but if you’re sending us to Bristol on a Friday, or Plymouth at 12.30pm on a Saturday, what do you expect?

“I might end up taking six days off to get to all of the games. In all my time following Leeds, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it fall like this, where you’re doing this much travelling in such a short time.

“I don’t know if I’d say I’m looking forward to it. Probably not, if I’m being honest, but you do it because you love it really, and you don’t want to miss any games if you can avoid it. But that’s it — anywhere we go, we sell our allocation. So to the people organising it all, it doesn’t really matter.”

For Farke, these are potentially decisive moments.

The trip to Bristol City falls a day before fellow promotion contenders Ipswich Town and Southampton play their matches, so Leeds will move into the automatic promotion places for the first time this season if they win on Friday.

A slow start to their campaign, though, means the margin for error was always going to be small.

Emerge from this glut of away days and Leeds will plough immediately into a home game against leaders Leicester City — another Friday night fixture, on February 23.

“Although it’s a lot of travelling, managing games like these isn’t anything Leeds won’t have done before,” Walsh says. “It’s an abnormal run of games but clubs have people who are trained to manage everything, and Leeds will use the processes that are already in place.

“It’s not always easy knowing what’s for the best. You could stay down south between (the matches against) Swansea and Plymouth, but to do that, you need lots of kits and equipment with you for the players, the staff and the analysts. Sometimes, it’s better to go home and travel again than it is to limit the travelling. These are the little nuances you have to think about.

“I worked abroad last season and, in Europe, they call these ‘English weeks’ — the periods where it goes Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday. It doesn’t happen so much abroad but here, and especially in the Championship, it’s what you get used to.

“It’s not as if it’s new for Daniel Farke (who managed Norwich City from 2017-21). A coach working in England for the first time must think, ‘Bloody hell, what is this?’, but if you know the league, you’re very used to it.”