Just over two weeks ago, Southampton and Leeds United played what turned out to be a dress rehearsal for this season’s Championship play-off final. Visitors Southampton came out on top that night, winning 2-1.
And last September — before either club had gone on manic unbeaten runs in an attempt to keep up in the race for the second tier’s two automatic promotion places — Russell Martin also got the better of Leeds counterpart Daniel Farke, 3-1, in the reverse fixture.
In reality however, those results will count for little when the teams walk out at Wembley on Sunday to decide who will go up to the Premier League with Leicester City and Ipswich Town.
That was proved by Oxford United and Crawley Town in the EFL’s other two play-off finals last weekend, having won promotion despite not winning either of their league fixtures against opponents Bolton Wanderers and Crewe Alexandra respectively.
Indeed, Oxford’s 5-0 defeat away to Bolton in March was so bad it was 1) their heaviest of the season and 2) a game their manager Des Buckingham said he could not, and now will not, ever watch back. They were comfortably the better side in Saturday’s final, and so that footage can safely be consigned to the dustbin of history.
Things are somewhat tighter in the Championship, particularly between Leeds and Southampton.
Maybe there is some mental benefit for Martin’s side in knowing they went up to Elland Road and turned Leeds over so recently. Or maybe it is fuel Farke can use.
The additional fun subplot to all this, beyond the tactical scheming and the atmosphere fans will generate on the day, is that Farke and Martin have history from their time together as manager and player at Norwich City seven years ago.
As a double Championship-winning manager in his four years at Carrow Road, it has not been a surprise that Farke has often referred to his time there in press conferences this season as he tried to navigate the tricky waters of fans’ emotions in the promotion charge. That Leeds knocked Norwich out of these play-offs by a 4-0 aggregate scoreline just keeps adding layers to the complexity of emotion that has coursed through this campaign.
That second leg win over Norwich at Elland Road, which even the most optimistic of Leeds fans could not have predicted after the first leg stalemate, showed Farke’s tactical nous.
In the first leg, with Patrick Bamford sidelined by a knee injury, he started with Georginio Rutter at No 9 and Archie Gray playing as a No 10. At home, Gray retained his place but it was Joel Piroe starting ahead of him, reflecting a more ambitious approach after unsettling the Norwich defence off the bench in that goalless match at Carrow Road. The tactical tweak worked perfectly.
And there lies the challenge in this tactical match-up between the two managers.
Where Farke was criticised at times for taking too long to make substitutions as Leeds slipped out of the automatic promotion slots, he is more fluid in terms of his team’s style of play than Martin, whose absolute commitment to Southampton’s formation and possession-heavy brand of football has obviously worked well for them but can be unpicked if you get it right.
The goal Leeds scored against Southampton in that game this month showed exactly how that can be done: press high and Southampton’s commitment to playing out of the back can lead to mistakes which are easily punished. Piroe scored the equaliser that night after a turnover of possession in Southampton territory.
But then comes the flip side.
When Southampton get it right against a high press, committing players forward could leave Leeds exposed and easy to carve open.
Southampton have caused Farke’s men problems through the attacking threat of Kyle Walker-Peters at right-back, as Junior Firpo knows only too well from that game at Elland Road, and by playing the likes of Adam Armstrong (three goals in the two games this season against Leeds) in behind. Late runs by Will Smallbone made him particularly hard to pick up, too.
Both managers are smart enough not to let their history — personal or tactical — cloud their emotions on Sunday. But Martin, who played over 300 games for Norwich over nine years, has spoken publicly about how he wishes his exit had panned out differently.
Farke froze Martin out of the first team early in his 2017-18 debut season before the Scotland international defender joined Rangers on loan and then had his Norwich contract terminated by mutual consent before the following season.
Martin has described that time at Norwich as the toughest of his career. In his version of events, there was early friction with new manager Farke when — on behalf of his team-mates and in his role as captain — he raised questions about scheduling and travelling times during pre-season. Then came a testing game that August against Millwall, where Farke substituted Martin 14 minutes into the second half after the side conceded three first-half goals. Fans booed him off the pitch.
It would be his last senior game for Norwich.
“I wanted to keep my integrity and professionalism through the whole thing,” Martin told The Athletic in 2019 while playing for MK Dons, who he would later lead as player-manager and then manager. “There’s this myth Daniel and I had a big fallout. I still shook his hand every day. We still had a conversation about football every now and then. I didn’t agree with everything he was doing but I didn’t express it to the lads, because that would have a detrimental effect. I just stayed out of it.”
Farke, for his part, said ahead of the two teams meeting last September: “On a personal level, it is always great. He was a great player and a great human being.”
After Norwich won promotion at the end of the 2018-19 season, Martin is said to have sought out Farke and shaken his hand with no bitterness between them.
On Sunday they will likely do the same again, for the third time this season, but only one will leave Wembley with the satisfaction of their biggest win yet under their belt.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
