Leeds thriving around a new Welsh core as promotion charge gathers pace — The Athletic 3/2/24

By Phil Hay

It was Ethan Ampadu who Connor Roberts texted to say that his loan to Leeds United was on but, in truth, it could have been any one of the boyos. Roberts, Ampadu, Daniel James, Joe Rodon; as tight as you like and as thick as thieves.

Who foresaw, after the United States’ fling with Leeds, that Wales would be next to plant its flag at Elland Road?

Half of those four players were close to home last night, across the Severn Estuary, helping Leeds beat Bristol City at Ashton Gate, and it is uncanny how Welsh influence has become so positively firm in one corner of Yorkshire. Even the list of potential right-backs which yielded Roberts from Burnley on deadline day last week also featured Nottingham Forest’s Neco Williams, a player hailing from you-know-where.

There is, if you look back, a broader association over the years, from the man-mountain John Charles to the majestic Gary Speed, both of whom were bred of heaven.

Is it a coincidence that Leeds, in going after immediate promotion back to the Premier League, have commandeered a chunk of Wales’ national squad? Yes and no. There is no unique appeal in Welsh footballers per se, but Wales are a team with a tier of players very nicely suited to the Championship. Beyond that, there is currency in forming a core of personalities around which a dressing room can orbit.

If manager Daniel Farke is as fixated on temperament as he says, it stands to reason that footballers who have helped make Wales a very competent side in international football would be a good breed for him. “It’s not about passports,” Farke said. “It’s all about character.” The feedback about Roberts’ he described as “perfect”.

“If I’m being totally honest, even if they weren’t here, I’d have been desperate to come,” Roberts said after signing on Thursday, but so much familiarity cannot hurt. Leeds have been getting younger and younger as a unit, trimming away faces who were once tasked with setting the example and, as Roberts pointed out himself, he is not far off as experienced as it gets at Elland Road — a defender who has ridden in other Championship rodeos.

He has won the division’s title with Burnley, contested its play-offs twice, including one final, with Swansea City and has willingly come back for more. He is the Luke Ayling replacement Farke wanted, a former Championship team-of-the-year inductee without predecessor Djed Spence’s baggage.

This, after all, is not far off show-time; the point in the Championship season where the country discovers who really has a pair.

Leeds have hung in there up to this point in the promotion chase — a term which does no justice to their form as a whole but reflects how fierce the pace at the very top of the division has been — and they went second last night by navigating a blustery game in Bristol, dominating and winning it with a Willy Gnonto goal which he badly needed. Five months passing since his last, against Ipswich Town in August, had lodged him in a rut — as Gnonto showed himself with a wild punch towards the away end as his 48th-minute shot nestled in the net.

“He had difficult times,” Farke said. “I’m pretty delighted for him. But I wouldn’t over-interpret one goal, either.”

Farke’s team has a hefty share of youthful adventure, the flair and abandon which has Leeds at their most watchable, and it will do them no harm if Gnonto is about to come out of his shell. But the steady hands lie elsewhere; like the recently-established defensive partnership of Rodon and Ampadu, which has given so little away.

Leeds switched to that all-Welsh axis out of necessity but Farke is sticking with it now through choice, with Ampadu preferred to fit-again club captain Liam Cooper. Pascal Struijk will challenge that position more thoroughly when he gets over a muscular injury but, even then, Farke will have a decision to make. His midfield looks stable. Leeds’ winning streak stands at five league games. Bristol City’s expected goals figure came in at a paltry 0.42 last night.

That a 1-0 win was so tight on paper was only down to Leeds’ finishing, and a scissor tackle by George Tanner on Georginio Rutter which looked like a penalty but wasn’t given. Crysencio Summerville took the wrong option with an early one-on-one, going for a chip and letting Max O’Leary get a palm to it, and Rutter would have scored before Gnonto had his low effort not spun over the crossbar after clipping O’Leary’s heel.

After making a mess of away games like yesterday’s before the turn of the year, Leeds have begun finding solutions: thrashing nearby Cardiff City on their own pitch last month and now proving a cut above Bristol City, another mid-table side.

Nor is Archie Gray, at right-back, hurrying Farke into making a change there by bringing Roberts into the fray. Roberts, who is ineligible until next weekend’s home game against Rotherham United anyway, said on Thursday that he had been given no promise of game-time from Farke, which is just as well because the German would not presently be replacing Gray on merit. But Farke will need Roberts at some stage in the next four months, and in more ways than one.

Short-lived though their present position in the automatic promotion spots is likely to be, with Ipswich and Southampton playing Preston and Rotherham respectively at 3pm today (Saturday), Leeds going second made it all very real.

Talent is not in question. Nor, at the moment, is consistency. Somewhere in the run-in, the balance could be tipped by strength of mind and the matter of who can hold it together.

Roberts, at this level, knows what it takes. Ampadu and Rodon look like they do, and it is the latter’s voice which is booming on the pitch. James, injured at present, has gone from looking like a boy lost, like a fruit machine which won’t pay out, to cracking the elusive knack of right place, right time as regularly as Farke could ever have hoped for.

Leeds is becoming home away from home for the men of the principality, Yorkshire’s Republic of Wales, and there is no price to be placed on prior experience of nailing promotion.

“The Championship’s an emotional rollercoaster,” Roberts said, speaking as one who has taken the ride plenty of times before.

Brace yourselves for it.