Leeds United versus Southampton last weekend was not a game to miss — until it transpired late in the day that missing it might not matter after all.
Events elsewhere left two clubs with broken designs on automatic promotion back to the Premier League to go through the motions, but long-distance travel plans had been made in advance and the directors’ box at Elland Road was packed out regardless: there was no Will Ferrell (that day will come) but 49ers Enterprises’ investment group turned out in numbers for the regular season’s last day of the 2023-24 Championship’s regular season.
An executive dinner took place in Leeds the night before, and the club’s hierarchy is in that limbo position of having much to discuss but nothing to talk about yet in terms of where they go from here. It might be the Premier League for them next season. It could be the Championship again. They will know for sure within 18 days, after 11 months spent getting to the play-offs.
That Leeds and 49ers Enterprises, the venture-capital arm of the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers, both want promotion to materialise in these next few weeks goes without saying. Whether they need it to happen — at this precise moment, at the first time of asking — is a separate matter.
The 49ers did not categorise their first year of ownership at Leeds as promotion or bust. They were rational about the possibility of having to play a longer game and, in private, they speak about potentially controlling the club for a decade or more. But there is no disputing that failure to win these play-offs would bring on some hard decisions.
The club have had one of the biggest playing budgets in the Championship this season, a legacy of the Premier League wage bill they were relegated with last May, the first injection of Premier League parachute payments and the 49ers’ willingness to spend in the transfer market.
Actor Will Ferrell is now part owner of Leeds United (Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports)
The combined price of their investments in Ethan Ampadu, Joel Piroe, Glen Kamara and Ilia Gruev ran to just under £30million — albeit not all of that money was paid up front. Though last season’s £12m-a-month salary costs were heavily slashed, wages at Elland Road still sit comfortably at the division’s top end. Hence why Leeds have been one of the Championship’s strongest teams.
All the while, their finances have remained within profitability and sustainability (PSR) limits: not easily, and not without Luis Sinisterra’s season-long loan to Bournemouth of the Premier League being turned into a permanent exit, but Leeds indicated several weeks ago that they would come out of this season without being in breach of PSR.
Year two back in the Championship would alter the landscape.
The standard annual parachute payment for a club’s second year after relegation drops from around £44million to £35m. Leeds’ ‘acceptable loss’ limit under PSR would change from £83m to £61m over a three-year cycle, on the basis that permitted annual losses are lower in the EFL. Wiggle-room becomes considerably smaller.
Internally, Leeds are realistic about what that would mean for squad-building and transfers.
The club do not think failing to go up via the play-offs would necessitate an unrestricted fire-sale but, in the face of PSR compliance alone, there would be no avoiding pressure to cash in on certain players: to ensure agreeable accounts while keeping the squad as competitive as possible and financing stuff like owed transfer payments, of which there are plenty at Elland Road.
Some players might actively ask to move on if Leeds aren’t promoted. Some, like the Championship’s player of the year Crysencio Summerville, offer a route to big fees and substantial amounts of profit, a key factor in balancing the books in line with PSR limits. Archie Gray, the 18-year-old midfielder, is Leeds’ most valuable asset but there is no public-relations upside in listening to offers for the best academy graduate they have produced in years. Gray, in any case, has only recently signed a new contract to 2028.
As for manager Daniel Farke, the most likely approach to his future if Leeds do not go up can probably be gauged from the track record of those running the 49ers’ NFL franchise: they are not prone to snap judgements or ever in a hurry to tear up models they have invested in. They don’t tend to flip-flop or veer off in new directions suddenly.
All of the players brought into Elland Road since Farke’s appointment in July were signed on his say-so, or with his direct approval. He is said to have a firm relationship with Leeds’ board and the chairman, Paraag Marathe. The 49ers have warmed not only to results under him, in the main at least, but also his public persona and knack of speaking in a way which avoids messy headlines.
Having seen him take Leeds to 90 points this season, the temptation will be there to think Farke can do the same next season — and that, in line with the average Championship term, 90 points again in 2024-25 would get them promoted automatically.
The German signed a four-year contract when he came to Leeds last summer. The PSR picture at Elland Road would not be helped by having to pay him off, and it remains the case that he was not set promotion as a fixed target for his first year as the club’s manager. He merely set his stall out at his interview by saying that his two previous Championship titles with Norwich City were proof he could achieve the same again — and at the end of the last international break in March, he looked like he might.
Farke took Norwich up twice – but neither was via the play-offs (James Baylis – AMA/Getty Images)
Farke said last week, as automatic promotion got away, that he and his squad had paid for the time taken to get going in the season’s first two months. On the face of it, though, the final month was what found them out.
As for the 49ers’ investment group itself, the structure of it, as it was when they bought Leeds from Andrea Radrizzani, has not changed much. It was forced to alter in the wake of relegation because certain parties who were ready to back the 49ers’ purchase of a Premier League club were no longer interested once Leeds dropped down a division. But the appeal to the glitterati has not diminished.
Over the weekend it was revealed that Ferrell had become a minority investor in the 49ers’ fund. He already owns a major stake in MLS team Los Angeles FC. Fellow Hollywood actor Russell Crowe announced a short while back that he was involved financially at Elland Road too. None of these injections represent the most serious funding behind Leeds but the interest in where this is going long-term is very much intact.
There is, evidently, a straightforward way of avoiding any of the more awkward considerations.
Winning the play-off final on May 26 clears a swathe of logistical headaches. Farke and the 49ers still hope that will happen, and Leeds get going in the first leg of their semi-final away against Norwich on Sunday.
But it would be very unlike Marathe or the 49ers if they were unprepared for the possibility that it does not.
(Top photo: MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
