The Championship in 2023-24: Where one Leeds loss feels like the walls are closing in — The Athletic 8/4/24

By Phil Hay

No coach in world football can be as ruthless with substitutions as Marcelo Bielsa. Who can forget Kalvin Phillips, on his 100th Leeds United appearance, traipsing off the field after 20-odd minutes against Swansea City, sacrificed like the proverbial goat for the greater good of a midfield which wasn’t working that day?

Current Leeds boss Daniel Farke? Not so much — and one thing Leeds fans have learned about him in this debut season is that he trusts the plan he goes into a game with to figure itself out without any hasty tinkering. His, on average, are the latest substitutions in the 2023-24 Championship, so when he went to his bench at half-time away against Coventry City on Saturday, it was a sure sign that Leeds had run into trouble in a manner that could not be neglected.

There is something faintly ludicrous about any club encountering trouble after 15 league games without defeat, but welcome to England’s second division in 2023-24.

Only here could Leeds lose for the first time in three and a bit months and spend the night that followed fretting about what it might cost them. Exceptional runs resonate most when they count for something and they have never counted for less in this bewildering league, where weekend follows weekend without yielding clarity.

Southampton produced their best streak of form for a century yet are cut adrift of the automatic promotion argument. Leeds could go unbeaten at their Elland Road home from day one in early August to the last kick of a ball nine months later and still wind up in the play-offs.

Considering the way this season’s Championship has refused to sort itself out at the top, it would be folly to think of these latest results as decisive, but Farke finds his squad third with five regular-season matches to play; by no means the equivalent of being behind the eight-ball but requiring someone else — Leicester City or Ipswich Town, the sides in the two automatic promotion spots — to lose control of the cue-ball during the few hours of football they have left.

Before the March international break began, Leeds were beginning to look a little unstoppable. Since it finished, they have been mining their resources of stamina and just about finding enough, drawing late at Watford on Good Friday, beating Hull City late on Easter Monday, staying on the straight and narrow.

Their visit to Coventry, though, pushed them further out of their comfort zone and Farke throwing Connor Roberts into the fray in place of Glen Kamara at half-time, the type of tactical move he rarely makes so early, was the giveaway of a performance which was threatening to come up short once Leeds conceded the first goal after nine minutes.

Still 1-0 down at the start of the second half, the balance of the contest duly changed but not as quickly as Farke wanted it to and not before Coventry had scored again. The introductions of Mateo Joseph and Joel Piroe with 24 minutes to go — as it happens, precisely the time when Farke’s first substitution of a game tends to come — were more impactful switches and “smart changes” in the words of his Coventry counterpart Mark Robins, but fresh blood Leeds could have done with earlier, perhaps when it became 2-0 15 minutes earlier.

Coventry know their business under Robins. He and they are a good match, a steady blend of skill and strength, both of which dictated the first hour. They are in this month’s FA Cup semi-finals and could also squeeze into the play-offs yet from their position four points outside them, and the sense of this being as difficult a match as Leeds had left was borne out by the reality of it. Coventry, after all, had gone as close as most visiting teams to prising a win out of Elland Road in December’s 1-1 draw.

Piroe, who scored in the 76th minute to halve the deficit, should have equalised in added time, his head-in-hands pose the reaction of a forward who realised what he had missed and that those are the fractions that can decide seasons; his scuffing a sitter rather than smashing his laces through it and, at 1-0 down, Patrick Bamford going for a Junior Firpo cutback with his left foot when, as Farke said afterwards, his right would have made a tap-in easier.

Coventry, in contrast, were ruthless, Ellis Simms heading home that early opener as Illan Meslier went looking for a corner but got nowhere near retrieving it, and Haji Wright side-footing in a deep cross with even less of the second half played.

Farke described Leeds’ overall statistics as representing “a good away game” but conceded they had lost the “decisive duels” in the face of the threat generated by Simms, Wright and others in the home team’s sky blue.

Kamara’s repeated carries offered nothing at the end of them and Farke’s head of performance, Chris Domogalla, running to grab substitute Roberts at half-time was the hint at a switch coming, freeing Archie Gray to step into midfield. “It was tactical,” Farke said. “I got the feeling (Kamara’s) energy level was not at its best. I wanted more intensity.”

Leeds are usually able to uncover that in circumstances where they need it and there is a good reason why they have been so consistent in 2024: because of their exceptional knack of converting potential victories into results. From winning positions, Farke’s side have dropped only four points all season — the last time? At home to Coventry, just over a week before Christmas.

To put that figure in context, Ipswich have shipped 10, Leicester 12 and Southampton, the stragglers in the automatic promotion race since four became three, no fewer than 20. When Leeds score first, that goal usually wins, and Robins sent Coventry out to attack with the intent to prevent that happening, aerially superior and awash with raw energy before they got tight and deep in the last half-hour.

Coventry are chasing Norwich City for sixth place, the final play-off spot, and Robins was honest in admitting that his players had paid close attention to them beating arch-rivals Ipswich in the day’s early kick-off.

Farke said his squad had followed events at Carrow Road too, the result there a huge opportunity for them, but denied that it had exerted any influence on their performance against Coventry. “We had a difficult game today,” he said. “That (Ipswich’s defeat) was not the reason.” Nor, he said, was Leeds’ defeat a moment for “big fighting messages” of defiance, despite control in the battle for a top-two finish shifting elsewhere.

Farke has been through the tension of promotion from the Championship before, though not quite like this. In 2019 and 2021, his Norwich teams were close to being home and hosed in the race for one of the automatic spots by now, the job almost done.

With Leeds, and from here, he needs another twist in the tail to realign the table and spare his club from the creeping death of the play-offs.

“It’s important to calm myself,” Farke said. “I never went through a season without a defeat. I’m struggling to be over-critical of my players but it’s also important to point the finger at one or two details where we should have been better.

“I want to be a bit self-critical. I feel like we had a bit more to give in the first 60 minutes. After a loss, we should stay humble.”

Before the season began, Farke had two prime targets in mind: hitting 26 league victories and scoring 75 league goals, both of which were likely to be enough to put an automatic place within his grasp.

Both were reached on Easter Monday, much sooner, surely, than he would have predicted last August, but neither has yet allowed him to know if he will hit the target which truly matters.