How Daniel Farke is masterminding another Leeds promotion push — Mail 5/1/25

How Daniel Farke is masterminding another Leeds promotion push after the heartache of last season's Championship play-off final defeat and the loss of THREE star players, writes AADAM PATEL

Leeds sit top of the Championship with 53 points from their first 26 matches

Elland Road club have rebounded from their failure to gain promotion last term

By AADAM PATEL

On an April night at the Grosvenor House Hotel in Mayfair, four Leeds United players picked up accolades at the annual EFL Awards.

The day before, Daniel Farke’s side suffered their first home defeat of the season in the middle of a run of four points across their last six games which killed their chances of going up automatically.

Losing at Wembley to Southampton in the Championship play-off final was the nail in the coffin. Of those four players, three were gone by August with Archie Gray, Crysencio Summerville and Georginio Rutter all sold as Leeds banked £105M.

The other, club captain Ethan Ampadu, only returned to action last week after sustaining a knee injury in September.

Yet Leeds have five more points than they did at this stage last season and are crucially top of the tree in their bid to return to the top-flight.

‘At the start of the season, I wasn’t thinking about winning the league,’ Farke told reporters last week. ‘I was thinking how can we be successful losing so many key players.’

Defeat at Wembley was painful. Not least after winning 90 points - a tally that would have seen Leeds go up automatically in every season since 1998.

On the pitch, the likes of Ampadu, Gray and Rutter were in tears after investing so much across 49 games. Off the pitch, Farke spoke about ‘suffering’ but told his players to use it as motivation in their bid to return to ‘The Promised Land’ - a term he used repeatedly.

The Wembley post-mortem was limited to a solitary team meeting the day after the game where the German told the players to forget about it.

49ers Enterprises, Leeds’s owners were confident that Farke was still the right man and despite growing noise from sections of the fanbase, they noted his two previous promotions with Norwich as ‘priceless experience’ in their ultimate quest.

The squad reunited in July in Harsewinkel, a quiet town on the outskirts of Bielefeld in Germany near where Farke grew up, for pre-season.

Hotel-Residence Klosterpforte, a regular of Farke’s from his time at Norwich and used by Portugal and during the Euros, gave the players everything they needed.

It even had pictures of Farke on the walls at reception. ‘If it’s good enough for Ronaldo…’ was the line from Leeds’s Head of Security.

The secretive location was even discovered by Leeds fans who were told to stay away by German authorities, when they noted the hotel name on Jayden Bogle’s arrival video.

Regardless of promotion, Farke had planned this trip - he didn’t get the chance in his first summer and wanted to build squad unity. He knew too that big players were headed out.

Away from football, where a solid 4-2-3-1 setup and possession-based play was worked on, there was plenty of team bonding from bike rides to raft-building and go-karting.

Such was the competitiveness that a notepad at the hotel had all the results from various table tennis matches and card games between the players.

‘I was enjoying that I'm still alive,' Joel Piroe joked to the Yorkshire Evening Post. ‘I showed them a picture of my fiancée and my kid, I said I want to return to them so if you want to play Mario Kart in real life you guys do that but leave me out of it.’ But Piroe saw the value of it all.

‘I feel like in the last couple of weeks we've really grown towards each other. We know what we're working for and you really feel that everyone is going for it.’ the Dutchman added.

The players were pumped up but privately, Farke had concerns over whether his side were strong enough to beat newly-promoted Portsmouth on the opening day of the season, never mind win the league. They drew 3-3.

The loss of Summerville and Rutter saw Leeds lose a combined 55 goal involvements from last season. Farke admitted ‘we don’t have the brand anymore to be the big favourite’.

A Carabao Cup defeat at home to Middlesbrough highlighted the lack of strength in depth and a goalless draw at West Brom meant no wins in their opening three.

In the same week, Rutter left for Brighton with Farke revealing he wasn’t aware of the Premier League release clauses that left Leeds with little room to negotiate.

It was turning into a summer of discontent and felt like the club were heading towards crisis but Farke cracked on and Leeds were shrewd in their recruitment.

Joe Rodon signed from Tottenham for £10M as part of the Gray deal, after a season-long loan. He is arguably one of the best centre-backs in the division, alongside Pascal Struijk.

Bogle, Manor Solomon and Joe Rothwell all had experience while in Ao Tanaka, a gem was unearthed from the German second-tier by Farke for just £3M.

The Japanese international was nicknamed ‘James Bond’ after his display against Watford where Farke said he ‘saved’ Leeds. Without big names, others stood up.

In their first win of the season at Sheffield Wednesday, Willy Gnonto, who wanted to leave after relegation, delivered an inspirational performance while Brenden Aaronson, who jumped ship with a host of others in 2023, scored the opener. Now Leeds fans are singing their names again. Dan James has been impressive too.

There is an acceptance that Summerville was too good for the Championship (he scored a winner at Anfield) but his team-mates too often looked to him in matches while those at Thorp Arch questioned his commitment and professionalism. One club source says selling him was a ‘blessing in disguise’ even though he was a class apart on the pitch.

Farke made the call too to move on from experienced heads like Liam Cooper, Stuart Dallas and Luke Ayling, giving the others the chance to take responsibility.

In a youthful squad which only has two outfield players over the age of 30, his leadership group is made up of Ampadu (24), Struijk (25) and Illan Meslier (24).

Alongside Gnonto, Struijk was another that Farke pushed to keep. Perhaps the best example of the culture he’s created is the way the manager and the players protected Meslier after his mistake against Sunderland and closed ranks around him. The keeper was in tears but they shut the noise.

Even after another questionable display at Hull on the weekend, there was no criticism of Meslier, who Mail Sport understands that Leeds would be open to selling in January if a decent offer came in for the 24-year-old.

In the last week, Leeds have lost four points due to late goals with Farke stressing his side aren’t ‘the finished product which cruises through this league.’

‘We are one of the youngest sides in the league and we don't play without making mistakes,’ he said on Saturday.

On paper, Leeds are the best team in the division with 14 clean sheets in 26 games.

Farke’s 57 per cent win rate since taking over is the best by any Leeds manager who has managed at least 10 games. He averages two points per game.

Inevitably, there is still a Marcelo Bielsa hangover and split opinions in the fanbase but Farke’s record in the Championship is marginally better than Bielsa’s - albeit with a style of play that doesn’t capture the imagination in the same manner. Not that he will care.

At Thorp Arch, everything is geared to ‘getting promotion by any means necessary’. There is a clear demarcation whenever the first-team are using facilities from the canteen to the analysis rooms. Farke has an open-door policy and a commitment to providing thorough explanations.

His press conferences are regularly long affairs. When a local Norwich outlet recently asked individuals for a minute message to thank Delia Smith and Michael Wynn-Jones after they stepped down from the board, Farke sent back eight minutes of personal tales.

‘The players like him and there’s not many grumbles but he’s definitely got a temper,’ says one source. ‘He can talk about building for the future but that’s not the brief and he knows that. He has to go up. If he doesn’t, he gets sacked.

'The Premier League is the only acceptable outcome with the current investment model and all the eyes on the club, particularly from the US. As much as people want free-flowing football, that doesn’t guarantee promotion and Farke is straight up. The club want to push on and need to push on.’

Of the last 21 seasons, they’ve spent 19 in the EFL but Leeds are too big for the Championship. In the 2022-23 season when they were relegated, only the ‘Big Six’ outperformed them on commercial revenue.

The money made from kit and merchandising sales after their deal with Adidas put Leeds level with Celtic and ahead of teams like Inter Milan and Fenerbahce. Their Red Bull involvement is another example of a key partnership with a global brand. Deloitte’s annual Football Money Report for 2024 placed Leeds 27th in global football for total revenue.

Plans to expand Elland Road to 53,000, which would make it the seventh-largest club ground in England were released in September. Leeds have sold every home ticket over the past six years while their waiting list for season tickets stands at 26,000. The hierarchy see these numbers combined with the on-pitch success of recent promoted clubs like Nottingham Forest, Brentford, Brighton and Aston Villa as a taste of where Leeds could be in the short-term future.

Farke was loved at Norwich. The full-time whistle at Carrow Road was often met with Blur's 90s hit Parklife, with fans replacing the song's hook line with his name.

‘I'm not sure if Elland Road is ever going to be patient. It is the most emotional club in the country, if not in Western Europe,’ he said in December.

He knows enough about the ‘cauldron of expectation’ there.

‘It'll be difficult to come back stronger because we had 90 points this season,’ he said after Wembley.

But they are on course to surpass 90 points. Now Farke will be desperate to finish the job before the dreaded play-offs, where Leeds have a torrid record, and join Bielsa as the only manager since Howard Wilkinson in 1990 to take them back to the top-flight and where they believe they belong. In The Promised Land.

Do that and he won’t have to worry about getting lovers among the Leeds faithful.