How Daniel Farke transformed Leeds after inheriting ‘a mess’ — Inews 25/5/24

By Mark Douglas

Having heard their classic “I Predict a Riot” become the soundtrack of a night for the ages as Leeds United brushed aside Norwich, the city’s favourite musical sons have offered themselves up for an impromptu gig – if Daniel Farke’s men do the job on Sunday.

“We’d definitely be up for it,” Simon Rix, Kaiser Chiefs bassist, Supporters’ Trust board member, season ticket-holder and presenter of popular Leeds podcast Don’t Go to Bed Just Yet tells i.

“Leicester did a big Kasabian gig to celebrate but that was winning the Premier League, I don’t know about winning promotion.

“But I’m sure there’d be a bus parade if we did it and if there needs to be Kaiser Chiefs involvement, I’m sure someone has my phone number.”

It was an “amazing, surreal” moment for Rix that his band’s best-known hit rang around Elland Road after the 4-0 playoff semi-final win over Norwich on 16 May.

Just 20 years ago the club deemed a song that had the word riot in it to be “too racy” for match days but it sums up Elland Road emotions perfectly this season – tension, joy, disbelief and, if they win at Wembley, a sense of thumbing their nose at critics who claimed they were in too much of a mess to bounce right back.

“It’s the ultimate tribute to the song because you just can’t force it with football crowds. It either feels authentic or it doesn’t so I’m just so pleased it’s become a bit of an anthem this season,” Rix says.

It is certainly better than the alternative often heard around West Yorkshire, a play on Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” adapted to goad Leeds about their propensity to wilt under pressure.

It was sung by Leicester’s Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall at their promotion party and then again by Ipswich players as they toasted pipping Farke’s side to second place. But a defiant version of it is in the songbook of Leeds supporters too.

“Leeds fans sing it to have a dig at themselves,” Simon Grayson, who managed his boyhood club Leeds between 2008-12, tells i.

He knows all about how suffocating the expectation at Elland Road can sometimes prove. In 2009-10 his Leeds side flew out of the blocks in League One, only to stumble in the run-in and leave them requiring a victory against Bristol Rovers in front of a home sell-out to clinch promotion.

They prevailed despite going a man down, then a goal down, and the celebrations were as much driven by relief at not having to endure the playoffs as they were joy at returning to the Championship.

“I think the fans will probably go into this weekend a little bit fearful,” Grayson admits. The club have lost five of the six play-off campaigns they have played in, and not prevailed at Wembley since the 1992 Charity Shield.

“I’ve said quite a bit this week that the only issue with the play-offs is with the supporters, not the play-offs,” he says.

“I had this situation with Preston in 2015. We were nine times as a club failing at getting promotion through the play-offs and I just kept saying to the group ‘That’s got nothing to do with me as a coach, you as a group of players, because we are not mentally scarred with any of that’. I said to them ‘We can go down in history – go and use that’.

“If I was in Daniel’s position my last words to them in the dressing room would be ‘We’re not mentally scarred, go and be history-makers’. The players have no scars. It would be an easy excuse for them.”

Bonds were broken between club and the support base during two bruising years in the Premier League, the dismissal of the revered manager Marcelo Bielsa being the final straw for many.

The summer takeover by 49ers Enterprises, already a minority shareholder, ushered in a new era.

“We needed a clean slate. The trust and bond had been broken,” Rix says. “These guys came in and what I quite like about them is this isn’t about the ownership group.

“You see it at Chelsea to some extent and we had it with [previous majority shareholder] Andrea Radrizzani – who I quite liked and thought did a decent job – that it was all about him and getting his credit.

“The 49ers want to do the job quietly, be effective, get the right people in the right jobs. With Daniel Farke they did the right thing of identifying someone who would be an expert at the Championship level.

“Things were a bit of a mess but Daniel did such a good job of guiding us though that, talking honestly with the fans and the press.

“He was honest that it would be tough but we’d get through it. He was strong on [Wilfried] Gnonto wanting to leave, he got the signings right – [Ethan] Ampadu has turned out to be an amazing signing – and has kept the right players.

“I credit the 49ers because they got Farke. There’s been a lot of problems, on and off the pitch, but he’s come up with solutions. Whether that’s Archie Gray at right-back or whatever. He’s managed to get them to raise their game for the playoffs and hopefully he can do it one more time.”

If Leeds do go up, Farke – an unfussy, unshowy manager whose messaging and tactics have often been spot-on – deserves plenty of credit.

Perhaps his greatest trick has been transforming the mood after Leeds’ end-of-season slump. “I had started to look at the teams coming down, thinking ‘We can beat them next season’,” Rix admits.

“But the way we beat Norwich, the way we turned around our form… I’m starting to get excited about Sunday now, which might not be a good thing.”