The Championship in 2023-24: Where one Leeds loss feels like the walls are closing in — The Athletic 8/4/24
By Phil Hay
No coach in world football can be as ruthless with
substitutions as Marcelo Bielsa. Who can forget Kalvin Phillips, on his 100th
Leeds United appearance, traipsing off the field after 20-odd minutes against
Swansea City, sacrificed like the proverbial goat for the greater good of a
midfield which wasn’t working that day?
Current Leeds boss Daniel Farke? Not so much — and one thing
Leeds fans have learned about him in this debut season is that he trusts the
plan he goes into a game with to figure itself out without any hasty tinkering.
His, on average, are the latest substitutions in the 2023-24 Championship, so
when he went to his bench at half-time away against Coventry City on Saturday,
it was a sure sign that Leeds had run into trouble in a manner that could not
be neglected.
There is something faintly ludicrous about any club
encountering trouble after 15 league games without defeat, but welcome to
England’s second division in 2023-24.
Only here could Leeds lose for the first time in three and a
bit months and spend the night that followed fretting about what it might cost
them. Exceptional runs resonate most when they count for something and they
have never counted for less in this bewildering league, where weekend follows
weekend without yielding clarity.
Southampton produced their best streak of form for a century
yet are cut adrift of the automatic promotion argument. Leeds could go unbeaten
at their Elland Road home from day one in early August to the last kick of a
ball nine months later and still wind up in the play-offs.
Considering the way this season’s Championship has refused
to sort itself out at the top, it would be folly to think of these latest
results as decisive, but Farke finds his squad third with five regular-season
matches to play; by no means the equivalent of being behind the eight-ball but
requiring someone else — Leicester City or Ipswich Town, the sides in the two
automatic promotion spots — to lose control of the cue-ball during the few
hours of football they have left.
Before the March international break began, Leeds were
beginning to look a little unstoppable. Since it finished, they have been
mining their resources of stamina and just about finding enough, drawing late
at Watford on Good Friday, beating Hull City late on Easter Monday, staying on
the straight and narrow.
Their visit to Coventry, though, pushed them further out of
their comfort zone and Farke throwing Connor Roberts into the fray in place of
Glen Kamara at half-time, the type of tactical move he rarely makes so early,
was the giveaway of a performance which was threatening to come up short once
Leeds conceded the first goal after nine minutes.
Still 1-0 down at the start of the second half, the balance
of the contest duly changed but not as quickly as Farke wanted it to and not
before Coventry had scored again. The introductions of Mateo Joseph and Joel
Piroe with 24 minutes to go — as it happens, precisely the time when Farke’s
first substitution of a game tends to come — were more impactful switches and
“smart changes” in the words of his Coventry counterpart Mark Robins, but fresh
blood Leeds could have done with earlier, perhaps when it became 2-0 15 minutes
earlier.
Coventry know their business under Robins. He and they are a
good match, a steady blend of skill and strength, both of which dictated the
first hour. They are in this month’s FA Cup semi-finals and could also squeeze
into the play-offs yet from their position four points outside them, and the
sense of this being as difficult a match as Leeds had left was borne out by the
reality of it. Coventry, after all, had gone as close as most visiting teams to
prising a win out of Elland Road in December’s 1-1 draw.
Piroe, who scored in the 76th minute to halve the deficit,
should have equalised in added time, his head-in-hands pose the reaction of a
forward who realised what he had missed and that those are the fractions that
can decide seasons; his scuffing a sitter rather than smashing his laces
through it and, at 1-0 down, Patrick Bamford going for a Junior Firpo cutback
with his left foot when, as Farke said afterwards, his right would have made a
tap-in easier.
Coventry, in contrast, were ruthless, Ellis Simms heading
home that early opener as Illan Meslier went looking for a corner but got
nowhere near retrieving it, and Haji Wright side-footing in a deep cross with
even less of the second half played.
Farke described Leeds’ overall statistics as representing “a
good away game” but conceded they had lost the “decisive duels” in the face of
the threat generated by Simms, Wright and others in the home team’s sky blue.
Kamara’s repeated carries offered nothing at the end of them
and Farke’s head of performance, Chris Domogalla, running to grab substitute
Roberts at half-time was the hint at a switch coming, freeing Archie Gray to
step into midfield. “It was tactical,” Farke said. “I got the feeling
(Kamara’s) energy level was not at its best. I wanted more intensity.”
Leeds are usually able to uncover that in circumstances
where they need it and there is a good reason why they have been so consistent
in 2024: because of their exceptional knack of converting potential victories
into results. From winning positions, Farke’s side have dropped only four
points all season — the last time? At home to Coventry, just over a week before
Christmas.
To put that figure in context, Ipswich have shipped 10,
Leicester 12 and Southampton, the stragglers in the automatic promotion race
since four became three, no fewer than 20. When Leeds score first, that goal
usually wins, and Robins sent Coventry out to attack with the intent to prevent
that happening, aerially superior and awash with raw energy before they got
tight and deep in the last half-hour.
Coventry are chasing Norwich City for sixth place, the final
play-off spot, and Robins was honest in admitting that his players had paid
close attention to them beating arch-rivals Ipswich in the day’s early
kick-off.
Farke said his squad had followed events at Carrow Road too,
the result there a huge opportunity for them, but denied that it had exerted
any influence on their performance against Coventry. “We had a difficult game
today,” he said. “That (Ipswich’s defeat) was not the reason.” Nor, he said,
was Leeds’ defeat a moment for “big fighting messages” of defiance, despite
control in the battle for a top-two finish shifting elsewhere.
Farke has been through the tension of promotion from the
Championship before, though not quite like this. In 2019 and 2021, his Norwich
teams were close to being home and hosed in the race for one of the automatic
spots by now, the job almost done.
With Leeds, and from here, he needs another twist in the
tail to realign the table and spare his club from the creeping death of the
play-offs.
“It’s important to calm myself,” Farke said. “I never went
through a season without a defeat. I’m struggling to be over-critical of my
players but it’s also important to point the finger at one or two details where
we should have been better.
“I want to be a bit self-critical. I feel like we had a bit
more to give in the first 60 minutes. After a loss, we should stay humble.”
Before the season began, Farke had two prime targets in
mind: hitting 26 league victories and scoring 75 league goals, both of which
were likely to be enough to put an automatic place within his grasp.
Both were reached on Easter Monday, much sooner, surely,
than he would have predicted last August, but neither has yet allowed him to
know if he will hit the target which truly matters.