Leeds United 1-1 Coventry City: Repeat performance — Square Ball 18/12/23

TOO GOOD AREN'T WE

Written by: Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman

Daniel Farke wants his players to feel the disappointment of this draw, as if after trying everything else he has moved on to misery as his method of making them score. Usually, Farke protects his players from criticism, and he tried as always to emphasise the good in what they’d done against Coventry. But there was a shift in tone, away from mollycoddling, towards tough love.

If at times Farke talks about his players like they’re children, it’s probably deliberate, because they are. Back when Leeds were failing to score against Sheffield Wednesday, I broke down the inexperience of players like Georginio Rutter and Crysencio Summerville, not just at this but any level. And although they’ve won a fair few football matches since then, that shouldn’t be mistaken for growing up. Farke mentioned in midweek how he loved Summerville’s naivety when he tried to score instead of succumbing to Jack Clarke’s challenge and trying to get him sent off, but the flip was his longing for a player with the knowhow to do exactly that. Perhaps this is why Farke wouldn’t talk about referee Geoff Eltringham after this game, who didn’t give anything when Dan James went clean through and to the deck; Farke may regard this as a teachable moment gone awry. Okay, Cree, next time go down, but I forgot to mention that we still need a competent ref. It helps if you can dive a little less obviously than Dan, too.

I wonder what the Leeds team actually looks like in Farke’s head. He’s got players here who were expected to leave in summer, and some who tried to go but stayed; there were others Leeds tried to get but couldn’t. The further Leicester and Ipswich move ahead of Leeds at the top of the Championship, the greater the concern about what might become of our team if we don’t overtake one of them or follow them up through the play-offs, as good players will have to be sold, our loanees will go back, the players we loaned out will return. If Leeds don’t get promoted this season, next summer will mean another rebuild. But it’s possible that Farke has a better plan in mind for that eventuality than the one he cobbled together through the back end of this summer’s transfer window when he was sifting through leftovers, left behinds, and those who weren’t tempted by Bournemouth. What might Leeds look like if he had a full pick of players, his own choice of who to keep, sell and buy?

The obvious problem with his team right now is that it lacks a creative brain. Put another coin in the jar because I’m mentioning Pablo Hernandez again. Without that sort of schemer, Farke has put his faith in off the cuff naivety and individual talent, hoping youthful exuberance and skill will get the better of most Champo players in most Champo defences. The back six are solid, with a disciplined midfield, and the front four are given the ball like it would be thrown to a juggler, told to go on and impress us. The aim seems to be turning every game into a procession of Raphinha versus Gary Cahill moments to replay, with the inbuilt problem that even Raphinha, spinning the ball backwards through Cahill’s legs on his way into the penalty area, didn’t make a goal out of that.

One goal was made against Coventry, when a delicious pass towards the six yard box from Rutter was confidently flicked across the goalie by Summerville. If you hadn’t thought Leeds had been frustrated by the hour it took to pull that off, Rutter’s celebration gave it away, booting a spare ball off its little cone and up into the atmosphere. Leeds had been trying to get to that one spot all afternoon, either going wide and motoring in along the byline for a pull-back, or with a deft pass from the centre to the post, but the more they tried, the more their skills looked like tantrums. I’m wondering about a possibility that, while we wonder sometimes if Leeds aren’t a little slow, they aren’t in fact too intense, creating too many chances – enough for “four or five, perhaps six goals,” said Farke – because what the players end up building is a monument of disappointment. Add the Sunderland game, and by the time Summerville was getting into some post-match fisticuffs, Leeds had got through 180 minutes of free form attacking football with one goal and one point to show for it, despite being in their opponents’ goalmouths again and again and again. Maybe if Leeds weren’t so good at creating chances, they wouldn’t be so dismayed by missing so many chances, so would be calmer and more effective with fewer chances when they came along. Quality not quantity, basically. It might be nice for Dan James, hurtling into the six yard box in stoppage time, to be as relaxed and clearminded as he was when opening the scoring against Middlesbrough after five minutes the other week, instead of collapsing beneath the weight of a week’s expectation become desperation, and putting the ball anywhere but in.

By that time Farke had done his bit for anxiety by throwing Leeds into 3-1-3-3 because Coventry had equalised. This attacking six siren is not currently the cavalry charge of Norwich away, but a panic alarm. Coventry had come with a different set-up to Sunderland but the same basic idea – defend and wait – and didn’t need quantity or quality of chances to score when Ethan Ampadu lost the ball, went chasing after it, and left a gap in the middle through which centre-back Bobby Thomas surged before playing a pass out wide and getting into the box to head in the cross. If this goal proves anything, it’s that it’s easier to score when there’s space, the one thing Coventry wouldn’t give Leeds.

“Today they put everyone who was able to fight, to struggle, on the team sheet,” said Farke, “Mark (Robins) has done the same when he faced my Norwich side, being top of the league.” They played out a 1-1 draw at Carrow Road in November 2020, Coventry scoring an 89th minute equaliser that Farke, beset by an injury crisis, described as, “Disappointing – you want to die and there’s no doubt about these emotions.” This time he was a little less dramatic, settling for saying that he didn’t want to lift his players’ chins: “I don’t want to take this pain away. I think it’s quite crucial and important that we feel this pain,” he said. It’s another teaching moment, and in a sense this is why Farke is here, because he’s been through all this before. He wouldn’t even be drawn into commenting on referee Geoff Eltringham, because he’s, “had this referee already several times.” The draw with Coventry in 2020 was Norwich’s tenth consecutive game unbeaten, but still he wanted to die; this match was only the fourth time in thirteen games Leeds didn’t win, but I wonder what Farke is feeling as Leeds settle into 3rd place. Is a point from a Mark Robins stiflefest a reminder of the work of winning his second Championship, or a sign that doing everything he knows how to do might not be enough this season?

Mediocrity might have been easier to handle, this season. Farke had every excuse for Leeds being further down the league, for the performances not being so good, for automatic promotion being too far-fetched, for the play-offs to be a reasonable first season aim at this point. But his team are on the front foot so often, their skills are too obvious, and their league position is too tempting, that the risk now is not from lack of ability or ambition but from descending into frustration. Leeds need to find a way of avoiding being demoralised by playing so well, of not becoming dejected by the chances that don’t go in, or bereft if this season’s opportunity doesn’t take them up. The obvious answer is to score those chances and get promoted, but if only it was as easy as that.