Leeds made beating Ipswich look easy – is this the day the table turned? — The Athletic 23/12/23

By Phil Hay

Elland Road in 2010 was about as cheerful as Elland Road gets at Christmas. Leeds United skewered Queens Park Rangers, the soaraway leaders of the Championship, and Luciano Becchio signed a new contract, two big results in a single day’s work.

The Grinch? Neil Warnock, QPR’s manager, who did not seem inclined to let Leeds have their fun and was irked in the tunnel afterwards by George McCartney, United’s left-back, letting out a shout of “Yes!” within earshot. Only rarely did QPR lose that season. Warnock, his side a mile clear and his mood softened by the news that he had become a grandfather, could only be so magnanimous. “I thought their celebrations were a bit over the top,” he said. “They’ve not won anything yet.”

Leeds hadn’t and, in Warnock’s defence, nor would they once the season’s second half of fixtures played out. They were second in the league on that heady December evening, convinced that nothing was beyond them, not automatic promotion or the play-offs, and there is no better lesson about when or how to start counting chickens.

Daniel Farke banging on about why the league table at Christmas is neither here nor there sounds somewhat against the spirit of supporting a football club, until you think back to various false dawns Leeds have wandered through.

But then again, try pouring water on a result as vivid as Saturday’s, when Ipswich Town went up in flames like a lit match touching brandy. Here was third versus second made to look like one of the easiest games Leeds have played in years, a thrashing in which Ipswich failed to turn up in mind and only just about turned up in body. For a while now, Leeds have been trying hard to ask what Ipswich are made of and to ask definitely. Here it comes: the proof of the pudding and a compelling week of yuletide jostling, which very few competitions serve up like the Championship.

These are the games where you find yourself questioning Farke’s very valid logic about fixtures being worth three points and no more. True enough, statistically, but the hope among the crowd as Elland Road emptied — and, let’s face it, the unspoken wish in Leeds’ dressing room — is that what happened to Ipswich in a 4-0 beasting brings with it with some form of psychological weakening, enough to knock them out of the rapid stride they have kept up for months. Leicester City are next for Ipswich and Kieran McKenna; a nasty test of their ability to reset and relaunch as QPR did without missing much of a beat in 2010.

For McKenna, a couple of positives: Ipswich do not get wasted like this very often, or indeed at all under him. And the gap to Leeds in third stands at seven points, even though United have taken nine from nine against the two clubs above them. But mentally, something was going on at Elland Road. Leeds picked Ipswich’s visit for their biggest win under Farke, their most complete performance, their most organised and ruthless display of pressing on his watch.

While Leif Davis, their old left-back, was turning in an own goal and conceding a penalty — and while Ipswich were barely moving the ball into Leeds’ penalty area — everything was working for Farke, aside from Illan Meslier’s wibbly-wobbly distribution. “We were all over them,” Farke said, which was how it felt.

It didn’t matter that Joel Piroe and Georginio Rutter hit the crossbar, because what are six goals unanswered when a team are already scoring four? One way or the other, Ipswich were looking for a route out of town almost as soon as Pascal Struijk headed on the rebound at a corner after seven minutes, a bad start from which things did not get better. McKenna might have known when the bus waiting to take his players to Elland Road went down with a flat tyre after driving over a nail.

Leeds don’t score easy goals, Farke said recently. Well, there was one from Struijk. And a very easy victory to boot, though only because of the respective levels of performance. No one blows Ipswich away so emphatically or limits them to an xG (expected goals) of 0.12, or limits them to four touches in the box, or one in the whole of the second half, by chance. “It’s important that we are able to dominate even the best teams in the league,” Farke said.

United’s manager did that thing head coaches often do by claiming that, despite the goals, despite the attacking brutality, despite the effect of their counter-attacks — Leeds are “incredibly strong and at their absolute best when they’re a goal ahead and can transition,” McKenna admitted — nothing was more impressive than the fact that they kept Ipswich to nil.

There was something in that comment because in injury time, with the result long since decided, Farke had Ethan Ampadu diving into challenges, Willy Gnonto doing the same, both challenges an extension of Leeds’ insistence on making the contest theirs from start to finish.

McKenna saw no huge disparity in the first half but it was there in the body language more than anything: Farke’s players in an aggressive flow, McKenna’s starting to cut a slightly rattled group, everyone knowing how it looked as 1-0 became 3-0 before half-time in a supposedly 50-50 match.

“We won’t be revving everyone up for a big reaction,” McKenna said, but he would take one on Boxing Day all the same. Farke’s afternoon had been so good that he brought two crates of lager into the press conference afterwards, remarking that everyone had “earned a few pints”. “It’s definitely a confidence boost,” he said.

With the dust settled, it was fair to ask if Farke had been straight beforehand when he said that Ipswich at Elland Road was a game like any other. Had he handled the build-up differently in private? Had he wound his players up with extra force for what he described post-match as “a spotlight game”? Leeds, after all, have beaten Ipswich twice and bested Leicester in Leicester. It could almost be said that these face-offs are Farke’s side in their element.

“You’d have to ask the players,” he said. “If you ask me, I’d say I do the same things because I’m always on it. But maybe (the biggest fixtures) challenge me in a special way.”

A merry Christmas in Leeds, then, and the question posed of Ipswich at the very moment when it had to be posed. Farke and his squad kept a lid on their reaction at the end because, by any estimation, Warnock was right. Nobody wins promotion in December and Leeds are a long way from doing that.

But if it happens, and if the table turns from here, it is hard to think that Farke will not look back on his first Christmas at Elland Road as pivotal: muscles flexed, handouts of Heineken, the biggest meal in Suffolk some sobering food for thought.