Leeds United boss Daniel Farke's January window response and FA Cup attitude after win at Derby — YEP 11/1/26

By Graham Smyth

The Leeds United boss saw his side come from behind to beat Derby County in the FA Cup.

Leeds United's win at Derby County wasn't exactly magical but boss Daniel Farke says it could be the start of an FA Cup fairytale.

The German went with a strong squad to face the Championship outfit at Pride Park and though they made heavy weather of the first half and went in a goal down, they ran out 3-1 winners after a dominant second half. Goals from Willy Gnonto, Ao Tanaka and James Justin took the tie away from the Rams and sent Leeds into the fourth round.

"Very happy," said Farke. "Congratulations to my players for progressing against a Derby side who was competitive and showed a good performance. I was sure it was 50:50 today, of course you're the favourite but Derby have shown against top sides at Championship level that it's difficult to be successful here. We had to rotate a bit today, they had no midweek game. I think we needed 20 minutes to adapt to their aggressiveness and once we accepted it and were ready for the battles and duels our quality was shining through. If you miss this amount of chances, a penalty, hit the post and they score from one situation it's always tricky. It was important to not run into counters, keep going with the same processes. I said stay cool, the goals will come and they were taken in an excellent way. Very mature second half, well deserved."

The win puts Leeds in the hat for the fourth round and having given the Premier League elite such a difficult time of it in recent weeks, the Whites can perhaps dream of a cup run this season. Farke, as shown by the strength of his squad at Pride Park, is all in favour.

"I'm a big believer in cup competitions," he said. "Some see it as a distraction from the league but I'm a big believer. We have just the league, it's not like we had too many games in the League Cup, so we want to go as far as possible in the FA Cup. Otherwise I would have sent a different squad today.

"We didn't want to take any risks for Joe [Rodon], there were some red flags with Gabi [Gudmundsson] after he played so many minutes in recent weeks, but otherwise we had our strongest squad. We're not the favourite to win the FA Cup but competitions like this are made for fairytales. On days like this, really difficult away fixture against a really good Championship side, to progress is often the start of a fairytale. I don't want to speak about Wembley but we're in the next round and if we can progress into the next round and next round, I'll take it. It's the easiest chance to write history, in a cup, and to qualify for Europe. It's way more difficult on Premier League level. But right now I'm not dreaming about Wembley, just a few points against Fulham."

Farke lost Sebastiaan Bornauw to a possible adductor strain at the break during the victory but believes the injury to be minor. When asked if it highlighted a need for a centre-back signing in the January window, he insisted he was happy with his options.

"It's always good to have options but even today we had Pascal [Struijk] on the bench and Sam Byram can play there," said Farke. "Bornauw was playing a bit more like a full-back. It was always a bit in my head I would bring a more natural full-back in, with James Justin, perhaps even at half-time, even without Bornauw's problems with his adductor. We are flexible. Of course we won't fall asleep until the end of the window, but I'm happy with my group. We have a good group, we've made sure we're on a good path on Premier League level so far. We made sure we are good enough to progress here to the next round. We've shown we're capable of a group and gives lots of confidence."