How Daniel Farke's Leeds United 'weakness' can be weaponised amid 6,561 possibilities — YEP 25/4/24
Daniel Farke's young Leeds United team is treading new and perilous territory and maybe that's not such a bad thing.
By Graham Smyth
This is all a bit exciting, isn't it? Two games to go,
automatic promotion still possible. It's exciting in the same way that a
monstrous rollercoaster is exciting when you finally get to the head of the
queue. You know you want the experience, you know you should enjoy it but you
know there's a reason for your fear. It's that excitement that turns the
stomach just a little.
And though the proximity to promotion is not unfamiliar to
Leeds fans, it most certainly is for the vast majority of the players they'll
follow to London on Friday night. There are remnants of the Marcelo Bielsa 2020
Championship-winning side in the squad Farke has available to him. Patrick
Bamford, Illan Meslier, Liam Cooper and Jamie Shackleton were all there and
played parts of varying significance in that triumph, one that looked quite
different to what is possible this season. But other older heads like Sam
Byram, Glen Kamara and Junior Firpo have never been this way before, let alone
the young guns. The talisman of this season, Crysencio Summerville, has never
stood on the brink of history in the same way he does right now, knowing that a
brushstroke of his boot could ink his name indelibly in club history. Archie
Gray, as a Leeds fan, knows full well what it means to be where he is and to
have this possibility within his grasp, without knowing exactly what it's going
to take to take hold. The same goes for so many of the other young and
inexperienced individuals in the camp. So as a collective, Leeds are standing
at the head of the queue to a rollercoaster quite unlike any other they've
ridden before.
That definitely played a part in some of the nerves Farke
detected in the squad before they took on Middlesbrough on Monday night. The
first of the last three, it was a hurdle at which the automatic promotion race
could not be won but could definitely be lost. A defeat, the ensuing external
meltdown and the pressure that would have rolled on to Friday night's meeting
with Queens Park Rangers, would have been difficult even for a seasoned Premier
League and Championship yo-yo team to bear. A win put Leeds back on the front
foot, moving forward and reminded of what it is they are capable, most notably
in the attacking sense.
But Farke does not want his players, the younger ones
especially, overthinking consequences, ramifications and the 6,561 permutations
[Data: @8Yards8Feet/Simon Lock] that still exist in the automatic promotion
picture. Instead, he wants them focusing as much as humanly possible on the
next game, the next duel, the next pass or shot. He wants them walking this
unfamiliar path one surefooted step at a time. Perhaps having no prior
experience of such a scenario is actually a good thing - there are no memories of
previous failed attempts that could live large in minds at exactly the wrong
time. True, they've never done this before but they've never not done this
before, either. History cannot repeat if there is none.
Leeds United - There are only 9 games left which matter. Each of these have 3 possible outcomes, so there are 19,683 permutations (3^9). Leeds are promoted in 8,460 of them, rely on goal difference in 3,059, and enter the playoffs in 8,164.
— 8Yards8Feet (@8Yards8Feet) April 23, 2024
@GrahamSmyth @AllStatsArentWe pic.twitter.com/XFGckqR71y
That notion extends to the location of Friday's match, too.
Given the events, the controversy and the injustice suffered by the Whites in
the capital prior to and during the 2019/20 season and how London came to be
viewed, had Bielsa's team been sitting third with promotion in the balance
ahead of a penultimate game that was to take place at Loftus Road, an unhealthy
dose of fear and pessimism would have quite naturally crept in. It was London
where Gaetano Berardi was wrongly sent off in the defeat by Millwall. It was
Loftus Road where Nahki Wells did his best Larry Nance Jnr impression en route
to an ill-deserved winner. Loftus Road was not a happy hunting ground at all
for that Leeds team. This Leeds team do not carry those scars. This Leeds team
went to Millwall and got what they deserved. They rescued a point from the jaws
of defeat at Watford. They went to the EFL Awards and won. They've never been
to Loftus Road before, as a team. They have, however, played against, dominated
and beaten QPR before. They've just rediscovered their goalscoring form against
a better side than QPR, who will themselves be out to win and in danger of
leaving space for Summerville and friends to do their thing. So while Leeds do
not yet know exactly what this next week and a half will look like, or what
will become of them when it's done, they know they can take the next step.
It could be that the very thing Farke uses as context
whenever this side slips up - their youthful inexperience - can be weaponised
in the fight to pip Ipswich Town to second place or, in what would now feel
relatively miraculous, finish top. They know not the pain of that image of
Bielsa hunkered down in a moment of quiet, sad reflection in a Loftus Road
corridor. They know not what awaits them if they pick up a first Whites win at
that stadium since 2017 and go on to emulate Bielsa's promotion heroes. They do
know how they got here, though, and what it looks like. It looks like Ethan
Ampadu and Joe Rodon returning to their solid best as partners. It looks like
Ilia Gruev covering every blade of grass. It looks like Junior Firpo crossing
for Bamford. It looks like Georginio Rutter laying on chances for Summerville.
It looks like Summerville taking them. To get to where they've never been, they
can just go to what they know.