Paraag Marathe’s got his dancing shoes on and he’s ready to spin — Square Ball 3/9/25

Fake tales of San Francisco

Words by: Chris McMenamy

There’s a very apt Arctic Monkeys song that sums up Paraag Marathe’s carefully stage managed posturing in the media at various stages of the summer. ‘Fake Tales of San Francisco’ is a banger, but I’ll use another one:

Anticipation has a habit to set you up

For disappointment in evening entertainment

In speaking to Sky Sports before Leeds’ opening game against Everton, swearing on an open top bus and spilling state secrets to the Daily Mail, the Leeds United chair did his best to get the fans in a state of excitement not seen since The Beatles landed in America.

Leeds have made ten signings since promotion was confirmed back in May, a figure not seen since the summer of 2017 when Victor Orta lost the plot like your granny at a car boot sale, plucking almost any young footballer who’d played for a European club he had heard of.

So where did it all go wrong? Why are we going into September feeling jilted? And should we catch ourselves on?

All valid questions. I find myself almost self-loathing when I complain that Leeds didn’t add an eleventh signing of the summer after already spending around £100m, but it’s not as though they didn’t want to. In getting eight players through the door before a ball was kicked, Leeds bolstered the back end of the pitch while adding free agent strikers Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Lukas Nmecha.

Calvert-Lewin arrived after it became clear that Fulham’s Rodrigo Muniz wouldn’t be coming to Leeds, having previously been linked with a move and valued at £40m. This came after Leeds had also missed out on Igor Paixao, the Feyenoord winger that Leeds were willing to pay £30m for before he signed for Marseille instead.

Clearly, the club believed they needed something else in attack, whether as a traditional centre-forward or a creative player. Before the season opener against Everton, Marathe appeared on Sky’s Monday Night Football and said:

“History shows there’s always a lot of activity in the last few weeks of the window, certainly the last few days of the window. We’ll exercise every day that we can.

“I can’t speak for other American owners, I can only speak for myself. I’ve been in sports for almost three decades now. I love winning, I hate to lose, that’s what drives me. I don’t think about the commercial side of it, I think about making this club as successful on the pitch as it can be.”

Leeds United won that match 1-0 thanks to a late Lukas Nmecha penalty, which was also the only real chance created. “We are still in the market for more offensive options,” Daniel Farke said afterwards. “We are ready to be competitive in these three games, but not for the whole season yet.”

An offensive option arrived shortly after in the form of Milan winger Noah Okafor, signed for £18m. It’s not quite Paixao, but it’ll do. Signing Okafor meant letting Largie Ramazani leave on loan to Valencia while Leeds struggled to break down Sheffield Wednesday’s Under-20s in a League Cup tie. For all Ramazani’s faults as a team player, he does have the quality to make things happen by himself, at least, and that’s more than could be said of Brenden Aaronson’s performance that night. But we’ll say no more on that. Full-back James Justin also arrived as an upgrade on Isaac Schmidt, who left for Werder Bremen.

Even in Leeds’ impressive battling 0-0 draw with Newcastle, it was apparent that attacking reinforcements who could meet the rigorous Premier League standard were needed. “We have shown we are competitive in the first three games, but it will be difficult [thereafter],” Farke said after Newcastle. “There’s also no moaning, but, until the last hour of the window, we have to try everything to bring some more quality in.”

Farke should know better by now than to have any requests when it comes to transfers. He did ask the club in January 2024 to find a replacement at number ten for Georginio Rutter and the best they could do was offer Brenden Aaronson and a confused shrug.

“We’re going to have some difficulties but we’re going to get where we want to go and we’re going to be one of the best clubs in Europe,” Marathe told reporters in the wake of Leeds’ title-winning celebrations back in May. Bumbling your way through the end of the transfer window while your manager publicly pleads for help in attack, maybe those are the difficulties before we become the best team in Europe.

There’s every chance that Okafor, Calvert-Lewin and Nmecha stay fit despite their career injury records — like Manor Solomon — and prove to be capable Premier League options in attack. The last few promoted sides to stay up in the Premier League all had difference makers in attack, such as Brentford with Ivan Toney, Fulham with Aleksandar Mitrovic and Nottingham Forest with Brennan Johnson. The identity of Leeds’ difference maker remains a mystery, but perhaps that’s all part of the thrill.

The only Leeds United business on deadline day that progressed to completion saw Darko Gyabi sold to Hull City without any formal recognition or announcement from the club, an afterthought as the social media team presumably spent the evening deciding which part of the concourse Harry Wilson might look best posing on. The Fulham winger became the focus of Leeds United’s deadline day after Facundo Buonanotte turned them down over the weekend to join Chelsea, while a loan offer was reportedly rejected for Aston Villa’s Emi Buendia (Leeds deny such an offer was made).

Wilson was the last ditch winger who can take set pieces, a proven Premier League player even if he’s a somewhat unremarkable name in the eyes of fans who expect the next Raphinha to trot through the East Stand doors at Elland Road. Everything looked like it was falling into place on Monday afternoon, with a private jet booked to take Wilson from Wales’ training camp in Cardiff to Leeds for a medical. But it never took off and noise from various reporters, including the Independent’s Miguel Delaney suggested that the deal wouldn’t go ahead. The 7pm deadline passed without any white nor black smoke, but eventually the Leeds United journalist stable reported that the deal was off.

Nice one, Leeds. The fans’ ire was directed at Marathe and Leeds’ sporting director Adam Underwood, who came in for a lot of criticism as the name/face at the head of the club’s recruitment team.

At the risk of sounding unbelievably patronising, I’m not keen on blaming Underwood for not making magic happen in his first transfer window as recruitment chief because he’s obviously inexperienced. In the same way you would be taking a huge risk to put U21s coach Scott Gardner in charge of the first team, Marathe and the board’s decision to make Underwood the replacement for the experienced transfer guru Nick Hammond was a gamble. There’s also something to be said for Hammond being headhunted by Angus Kinnear at Everton, especially given that Kinnear’s departure was news months before he left the role. But whatever, it’s in the past now.

As much as Underwood took on the role, I feel some sense of sympathy towards him for having to negotiate the increasingly unstable Premier League transfer market, having to build a team capable of competing in the league with the same budget that Liverpool spent on one player. And having to deal with the expectant Leeds United fanbase. But that’s the business, baby.

Any perceived Underwood failure should also be borne by Marathe in the same manner that Farke would have to deal with the consequences should Leeds’ subpar attack fail to fire. Should things not work out for Farke, he’ll lose his job. The same can’t be said of Marathe, who instead will now have a chance to carefully reconstruct the ‘narrative’ as though he’s the symbolic editor-in-chief of Leeds’ equivalent of Pravda.

We await with tired anticipation the creative attempt to spin what was a truly shambolic end to an otherwise decent transfer window. But you know what they say about anticipation.

Get on your dancing shoes, Paraag. You’ve some explaining to do.