A week of face-to-face interviews about the manager’s job at Leeds United had left the board at Elland Road in full agreement. The actual appointment would take a little longer, as everything seemed to after relegation, but the interviews wrapped up and the die was cast. One name sat above all others: Daniel Farke.
Externally, not everyone was convinced. One person with recruitment experience and a line of contact with Leeds’ new ownership group thought the club should have a bash at Nottingham Forest’s Steve Cooper, on the basis that the Welshman had torn up the Championship very recently and, like the Duke of Winchester in Blackadder, was forever on his last legs at The City Ground. If Leeds asked the question, which ultimately they never did, who knew if Forest might bite?
But by then, the matter had already been closed. If someone like Cooper knew the Championship then Farke was every bit as immersed in it: two recent promotions out of it to the former’s one and, in the wider scheme of coaches who demonstrably had the measure of the division, as proven as any over the past decade.
Farke was not keen to speak about himself in those terms. Rather than a specialist in breaking out of the EFL’s top tier, he preferred to talk about how he and Leeds could evolve once back in the Premier League. But for the 49ers, walking with their new acquisition was more pressing than trying to run immediately.
To put it another way, the Premier League was worth thinking about once Leeds actually looked like getting there again. In the meantime, Farke’s credentials in the second tier were easy to believe in, even if that prior success at Norwich City was not guaranteed to translate directly to a different club. Farke understood how football was played at this level and what worked. None of his comprehension was based on archaic or outdated work. He was a safe-ish bet in a sport that doesn’t present too many of those.
Daniel Farke is showing why Leeds were right to hire him (George Wood/Getty Images)
And Leeds have no reason for reproach.
They remain unbeaten at home this season, the only team in the 24-strong Championship who can say as much, and are on a streak of seven straight wins at Elland Road after Saturday’s bar-room brawl with visitors Middlesbrough. To find a time when they were ticking along so relentlessly on their own turf, you have to go back to 2008-09, in League One, and, beyond that, to the fast-and-free spirit of David O’Leary’s tenure around the turn of this century.
Nothing in football is ever perfectly comparable. Farke has a big budget in his favour and, as Middlesbrough counterpart Michael Carrick gently lamented at full-time, some bloody good footballers for a league like this. But evidently, Leeds got themselves a coach who understands the Championship, having set out to find exactly that.
Their safe-ish bet managerially has not equated to safe-ish football either.
Both of their fixtures last week, against Rotherham United and Swansea City, bordered on the inebriated. And seven minutes into Middlesbrough’s visit, Leeds were 2-1 up having been a goal down to a handy side who were some way short of full strength and still getting a good tune from Jonny Howson, one-time Leeds academy poster boy, at the age of 35.
To add to a make-it-up-as-you-go-along plot, both Leeds goals were headers converted by the smallest players on the pitch, Middlesbrough succumbing to the aerial might of Dan James (5ft 7in/171cm) and Crysencio Summerville (5ft 8in).
There was a Joel Piroe penalty to come, a red card for the visitors’ Anfernee Dijksteel in the second half, Patrick Bamford pulling off a beanie hat to reveal bleached hair in the style of Eminem and enough chances for both teams to sink anyone, anywhere. Farke’s side had the greater control. A 3-2 victory was hard to begrudge them, even if Carrick was tempted to.
But Farke was unable to avoid ageing a touch more when, with Middlesbrough down to 10 men and crossing fingers for an equaliser, Samuel Silvera hit a post and Joe Rodon stuck his leg in the way of Morgan Rogers’ attempt to slot home the rebound. Carrick was asked to sum it all up. “Where do you start, really?” he replied.
Dan James heads in Leeds’ first goal (Jess Hornby/Getty Images)
Little flaws, unquestionably, can be found in this Leeds team, which is to say that Farke is not having it entirely his own way.
In moments, particularly when they go man-to-man out of possession, it is possible to suck them in, go through them and flood into the space behind. It does not happen as frequently as last season, but Middlesbrough’s brightest moments developed when Farke’s press was beaten.
Defending corners is not a particular strength, either, and Carrick’s men pulled the score back to 3-2 just before half-time when Sam Byram was caught on his heels and Emmanuel Latte Lath headed in.
But, week by week, Leeds are becoming reassuringly inevitable.
The only thing for Farke to lament is that the Championship is somewhat irregular this year. Leeds are averaging bang on two points a game after 19 matches and in a typical season, such a record would not be at arm’s length from the two league positions they truly covet.
It is blow-for-blow and punch-for-punch at the top of the division and Farke talked of Leeds being “desperate” for Saturday’s win, of that urgency seeping onto the pitch and creating a riot of a contest. “Sometimes we were driven by our emotion,” he said.
Part of him doesn’t want that but part of him likes it, and part of him must realise that Leeds are a club who have learned to exist on a diet of emotion. It was never the intention to cut that out in the summer; simply to marry emotion with substance through the currency of consistent results.
There is room for both, as Farke stressed afterwards, and Leeds are proving as much.
“We played with too many transitional moments — but it’s a part of my team I love,” he said. “Rather (that) than playing like football with sleeping pills.”
No danger of that.
(Top photo: Jess Hornby/Getty Images)
