Leeds United mutiny and litigation reminder underlines emerging blind spot for Farke — Leeds Live 17/12/23

Here are our four talking points from Leeds United's 1-1 draw with Coventry City at Elland Road in the Championship as Crysencio Summerville's opener is cancelled out by Bobby Thomas

A week to forget

Leeds United have not dropped this many points in consecutive games since the dark days of August mutiny, transfer politics, emasculating clauses and litigation. Daniel Farke has overseen such a consistent rise since that purgatory that one point from six has become a jarring and rare experience.

Of course, as a promotion hopeful with one of the three best squads in the division, Farke absolutely should have got them to where they are, but this week holds a mirror to how bleak the picture was just four months ago. The Whites have come so far, but still remain so far behind the top two.

Even when Ipswich Town drop points it hurts. They opened the door to some redemption with an East Anglian derby draw at Saturday lunchtime.

Leeds trapped their fingers as they slammed it shut. Two wins this week would have had the Whites five points off Kieran McKenna’s side with a chance to cut it to two next weekend.

Instead, the divide is 10 points and Leeds can no longer hide behind the shield of the early season. Next weekend is the halfway point and Preston North End on Boxing Day are the last of the 23 teams Leeds need to face.

There are still 72 points to win and so many twists and turns to come. The optimists will say Ipswich losses to Leeds and Leicester City (twice) can immediately trim the gap to one point, assuming United collect maximums.

The pessimists will say Ipswich have lost twice all season (once to Leeds in all fairness) and only gone more than one game without a win on one occasion. The odds remain stacked against the Whites and a week to forget like this one may just take some of the automatic promotion pressure off.

An abysmal referee Farke is sick of

Geoff Eltringham. A name which must make Farke shudder when he sees it on his match list. The County Durham referee was atrocious at Elland Road on Saturday afternoon.

The 43-year-old lost control of the game in the latter stages after 90 minutes of punishing the wrong players for insignificant offences, ignoring serial offenders and then, in Farke’s mind at least, failing to give a penalty for a push on Daniel James in the first half. Farke did not actually go on the record with his opinion on the referee, but his response was telling.

Asked simply whether James should have tried to stay on his feet, Farke said: “I had this referee several times, I don’t speak about him. In the last few years, I’ve had him several times and spoken about his performance. Not today.”

A cursory browse finds three matches in particular where the German was seething with Eltringham during his Norwich City days. In February 2019, after a 3-1 loss at Deepdale, Farke called the decision to give the home side a 24th-minute penalty a joke.

“I don’t have to speak about the second goal, it was ridiculous, a joke to concede a penalty, but it was the decision of the referee and you have to accept it,” he said.

In April 2019, after a draw between Norwich and Sheffield Wednesday, both Farke and Steve Bruce were unhappy with him. "I am on fire," said Farke. "If it keeps on going like this it will be very difficult for us to win games of football. Situations keep going against us and it is not acceptable anymore.”

Then in September 2020, having come back down from the Premier League, Farke even had Eltringham apologising to him. “It was the first time in my coaching career that, straight after a game, the referee apologised to me for not awarding two clear penalties,” he said.

“Fair play to him. It says a lot about his character to be that self-critical. It didn’t help us during the game, but we showed a great mentality. The first was a clear handball.

“He apologised especially for the second one, which was also clear. Whether anybody told him or he just realised at the end of the game I don’t know, but it says a lot about his personality.”

The Piroe-Rutter conversation goes on

Joel Piroe remains a goal scorer struggling to get involved as an attacking midfielder and Georginio Rutter dominates as a creative force struggling to find the net as a striker. The switch needed seems glaringly obvious, but whether you agree with him or not, Farke went to great lengths in his explanation of why he plays them in this combination earlier this season.

It was only 15 days ago Piroe had moved onto eight goals in 16 Leeds appearances. His goal-every-other-game ratio was trumpeted by this correspondent as the kind of material output the Dutch forward could draw confidence from.

Farke has alluded to past negativity about Piroe in his current role getting into the player’s head whenever he fails to score. For all of the challenges he has continued to find as a deeper-lying forward, the goal ratio could at least be something for the 24-year-old to feed off.

Sadly for Piroe, three straight blanks without any meaningful secondary impact on the attack have raised the red flags again. The work rate is there, Farke said he was covering 12km to 13km recently, but he simply is not involved enough in the team’s attacking play.

Even when you take into account Piroe’s 85th-minute withdrawal, his 42 touches are dwarfed by Crysencio Summerville’s 90 or Rutter’s 69. The former Swansea City striker needs to be scoring or assisting more regularly from that position on the pitch and he’s doing neither on a consistent basis.

Rutter’s all-round brilliance has been widely covered this season. A league-high ninth assist of the season was delivered deftly like so many of the previous eight, but there were also eight shots at goal.

Two of them were on target. Before Saturday’s match kicked off, Rutter had four goals from an expected tally of 7.1. That deficit only grew against Coventry and further emphasised, as Farke has said, why he’s playing in England’s second tier with Leeds and not in the Champions League.

The 21-year-old is a work in progress and tremendous fun to watch, but is he the right man in this team to be finishing off chances inside the penalty box? Is this proving to be Farke's blind spot?

A date with destiny

A final opportunity to directly dent Ipswich’s promotion train arrives as early as next weekend. After that, Leeds are left to rely on the rest of the Championship for favours as they meet the Tractor Boys each week.

There were similar connotations to United’s do-or-die trip to Leicester in November. Even after 14 games of a 46-match campaign, defeat would have meant a 17-point gap and almost certainly the end of any title aspirations.

If McKenna’s side get revenge for their only home loss of the season and beat Leeds, the gap goes out to 13 points. Even with half of the season to play, that’s an immense chasm to bridge when your opponent has lost twice in 23 games.

Ipswich would be able to lose four games and still hold a point advantage over Leeds and that assumes Farke’s side keep winning every week. This is a must-not-lose fixture for the Whites and at Elland Road that virtually means a must-win with the home crowd at their backs.

This is far from the kind of momentum Farke would have wanted to go into the game with, but he will have to shackle that adversity this week and use it to fuel his players.