Leeds are drunk on the glorious chaos of Daniel Farke’s football — The Athletic 3/12/23
By Phil Hay
A week of face-to-face interviews about the manager’s job at
Leeds United had left the board at Elland Road in full agreement. The actual
appointment would take a little longer, as everything seemed to after
relegation, but the interviews wrapped up and the die was cast. One name sat
above all others: Daniel Farke.
Externally, not everyone was convinced. One person with
recruitment experience and a line of contact with Leeds’ new ownership group
thought the club should have a bash at Nottingham Forest’s Steve Cooper, on the
basis that the Welshman had torn up the Championship very recently and, like
the Duke of Winchester in Blackadder, was forever on his last legs at The City
Ground. If Leeds asked the question, which ultimately they never did, who knew
if Forest might bite?
But by then, the matter had already been closed. If someone
like Cooper knew the Championship then Farke was every bit as immersed in it:
two recent promotions out of it to the former’s one and, in the wider scheme of
coaches who demonstrably had the measure of the division, as proven as any over
the past decade.
Farke was not keen to speak about himself in those terms.
Rather than a specialist in breaking out of the EFL’s top tier, he preferred to
talk about how he and Leeds could evolve once back in the Premier League. But
for the 49ers, walking with their new acquisition was more pressing than trying
to run immediately.
To put it another way, the Premier League was worth thinking
about once Leeds actually looked like getting there again. In the meantime,
Farke’s credentials in the second tier were easy to believe in, even if that
prior success at Norwich City was not guaranteed to translate directly to a
different club. Farke understood how football was played at this level and what
worked. None of his comprehension was based on archaic or outdated work. He was
a safe-ish bet in a sport that doesn’t present too many of those.
And Leeds have no reason for reproach.
They remain unbeaten at home this season, the only team in
the 24-strong Championship who can say as much, and are on a streak of seven
straight wins at Elland Road after Saturday’s bar-room brawl with visitors
Middlesbrough. To find a time when they were ticking along so relentlessly on
their own turf, you have to go back to 2008-09, in League One, and, beyond
that, to the fast-and-free spirit of David O’Leary’s tenure around the turn of
this century.
Nothing in football is ever perfectly comparable. Farke has
a big budget in his favour and, as Middlesbrough counterpart Michael Carrick
gently lamented at full-time, some bloody good footballers for a league like
this. But evidently, Leeds got themselves a coach who understands the
Championship, having set out to find exactly that.
Their safe-ish bet managerially has not equated to safe-ish
football either.
Both of their fixtures last week, against Rotherham United
and Swansea City, bordered on the inebriated. And seven minutes into
Middlesbrough’s visit, Leeds were 2-1 up having been a goal down to a handy
side who were some way short of full strength and still getting a good tune
from Jonny Howson, one-time Leeds academy poster boy, at the age of 35.
To add to a make-it-up-as-you-go-along plot, both Leeds
goals were headers converted by the smallest players on the pitch,
Middlesbrough succumbing to the aerial might of Dan James (5ft 7in/171cm) and
Crysencio Summerville (5ft 8in).
There was a Joel Piroe penalty to come, a red card for the
visitors’ Anfernee Dijksteel in the second half, Patrick Bamford pulling off a
beanie hat to reveal bleached hair in the style of Eminem and enough chances
for both teams to sink anyone, anywhere. Farke’s side had the greater control.
A 3-2 victory was hard to begrudge them, even if Carrick was tempted to.
But Farke was unable to avoid ageing a touch more when, with
Middlesbrough down to 10 men and crossing fingers for an equaliser, Samuel
Silvera hit a post and Joe Rodon stuck his leg in the way of Morgan Rogers’
attempt to slot home the rebound. Carrick was asked to sum it all up. “Where do
you start, really?” he replied.
Little flaws, unquestionably, can be found in this Leeds
team, which is to say that Farke is not having it entirely his own way.
In moments, particularly when they go man-to-man out of
possession, it is possible to suck them in, go through them and flood into the
space behind. It does not happen as frequently as last season, but
Middlesbrough’s brightest moments developed when Farke’s press was beaten.
Defending corners is not a particular strength, either, and
Carrick’s men pulled the score back to 3-2 just before half-time when Sam Byram
was caught on his heels and Emmanuel Latte Lath headed in.
But, week by week, Leeds are becoming reassuringly
inevitable.
The only thing for Farke to lament is that the Championship
is somewhat irregular this year. Leeds are averaging bang on two points a game
after 19 matches and in a typical season, such a record would not be at arm’s
length from the two league positions they truly covet.
It is blow-for-blow and punch-for-punch at the top of the
division and Farke talked of Leeds being “desperate” for Saturday’s win, of
that urgency seeping onto the pitch and creating a riot of a contest.
“Sometimes we were driven by our emotion,” he said.
Part of him doesn’t want that but part of him likes it, and
part of him must realise that Leeds are a club who have learned to exist on a
diet of emotion. It was never the intention to cut that out in the summer;
simply to marry emotion with substance through the currency of consistent
results.
There is room for both, as Farke stressed afterwards, and
Leeds are proving as much.
“We played with too many transitional moments — but it’s a
part of my team I love,” he said. “Rather (that) than playing like football
with sleeping pills.”
No danger of that.
