Daniel Farke says don't be fooled about Leeds United depth — Yorkshire Post 29/8/26
By Stuart Rayner
Daniel Farke is "cautiously optimistic" of adding
to his Leeds United squad before Tuesday's transfer deadline, but keen for
everyone to know that whilst he has been able to add quality, his changes have
just been like for like.
Although in Farke's eyes the Whites have no more depth than
they did when finishing 14th in last season's Premier League, he thinks their
big strength going into Sunday's first home game of the season, against
Brentford, is stability.
Leeds and Brentford are two of only 11 Premier League clubs
not to be under new management this term, and there has been no squad overhaul
either.
Harry Wilson, Tarik Muharemovic, James Trafford and Nico
Elvedi have all raised the quality of player at Elland Road but they have
effectively replaced Joel Piroe, Pascal Struijk, Karl Darlow and Sebastiaan
Bornauw from the 2024-25 squad. Sam Byram has left too.
Goalkeeper Michael Zetterer is close to signing but when he
does, Lucas Perri will join Torino on loan.
So Farke does not want anyone under the misapprehension he
has a deeper squad to work with.
"I've seen a few comments that we have improved our
depth in the squad and that's not true," he said.
"We have lost two goalkeepers in Illan Meslier (who
left for Arsenal, but did not play last season) and Karl Darlow and have
brought one goalkeeper (Trafford) in so at the moment we have one goalkeeper
less in comparison to last season.
"That's absolutely fine because Alex Cairns has stepped
up a lot and we can promote some young goalkeepers.
"We've replaced Pascal Struijk who played more or less
every game for us with Tarik Muharemovic and we've replaced an important squad
player like Sebastiaan Bornauw with Nico Elvedi.
"In the offence we've replaced (centre-forward) Joel
Piroe with (inside-forward) Harry Wilson. We've replaced important players one
on one. We lost Sam Byram as a left wing-back option and haven't replaced him
right now so you can have the opinion that our signings have improved the
quality if you want but after two games I'm careful not to judge it because we
played really well last season.
"The early signs are very promising and I like our
signings a lot but it's up to them to show it with consistency so after a long
season we can speak about really improving our quality."
The lack of specialist senior replacements for Byram and
Piroe leaves Leeds still looking light at left wing-back and centre-forward,
but Farke is hopefully it can be put right before Tuesday's 11pm deadline.
"We're in a good position," he said. "I'm
very pleased with our window so far but we will stay awake because the feeling
is that we want to do something more and for that we're definitely in a good
place.
"I don't want to speak too much about names or profiles
because it just puts the prices up when other teams or clubs listen to it, but
if you analyse our team a bit and where we lost a few players it's relatively
obvious where we would need a bit."
Asked if he was optimistic of further signings, he replied:
"Cautiously optimistic."
Ilia Gruev, Willy Gnonto and Gabriel Gudmundsson will all
miss Sunday's 2pm kick-off as they continue their returns from injury.
Meanwhile, Leeds' League Cup third-round tie at Chelsea will
kick off at 8pm on Wednesday September 9.
