Daniel Farke may not be receiving the recognition he deserves despite Leeds United leading the Championship with eight games remaining with one of the greatest squads in the division.
In the classic sequence of shots from the movie 500 Days of Summer, the male protagonist’s expectations are juxtaposed with reality as the screen is divided in half. When Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character goes to Zooey Deschanel’s house for a party as his love interest, things don’t work out the way he had hoped.
How has this season’s Leeds United performance compared to expectations? There are eight games remaining, so the situation is perhaps better than many fans could have imagined. Though Deschanel might just be putting a trophy on the table for him, Gordon-Levitt may have come into August expecting to make the playoffs or possibly a strong automatic promotion push.
The unstoppable nature of two other clubs, who can match Leeds, one of the greatest second-tier teams ever, point for point, is the ace in that scenario. Does the fact that Ipswich Town and Leicester City are so close together take away from Daniel Farke the credit he deserves?
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Leeds would have been comfortably ahead of third place with this point total in almost any other Championship campaign. While not fully fair considering what preceded each campaign, the comparisons with Marcelo Bielsa’s 2020 team’s points total of 71 are at least a useful starting point for understanding what 23/24 is offering.
Relegated teams should generally anticipate being included in the promotion picture, especially if they are leaving the Premier League’s wealth behind due to a financial gulf and enter the Championship. The core group of players should always be there even though teams fluctuate, there is conflict, management changes, and mental mending to be done.
Nine of the 17 Whites players with over 1,000 league minutes played in the previous campaign left the team before the summer transfer window closed. Because they were the ones who caused the drop, there was very little love lost for any of the departing players, as is typical during a relegation season.
That percentage does highlight the turbulence at Elland Road last summer, though. Concerned about their departure or not, it demonstrates the enormity of the undertaking Farke, Nick Hammond, Gretar Steinsson, and Angus Kinnear had to undertake.
Not every one of those escapes was simple either. There were sagas that drained the life out of everyone involved over the course of a summer. Even the players who chose to stay would put Farke’s forbearance, managerial abilities, and harmony in the locker room to the test.
Luis Sinisterra, Tyler Adams, and Max Wober did not depart Elland Road in a tidy or too sentimental manner. To keep the Italian out of the Championship, Wilfried Gnonto’s team was prepared to burn every bridge the Italian had ever crossed. Then, later in January, Farke had to end their standoff after it was revealed to the public by Charlie Cresswell.
All those cases have been resolved, and Farke has received high appreciation for how he handled them, particularly Gnonto, Sinisterra, and Cresswell. As we approach the final stretch, the Italian has emerged as one of the Championship’s most effective attackers.
As Farke had predicted, August and September were rough. As Farke had hoped, trusting the German’s process has now paid off. As Farke had hoped, Leicester, Ipswich, and Southampton all returned to Leeds in some kind of regression to the Championship mean.
Despite all of the ups and downs, this is a very strong team in the Championship. This group of players need to be aiming for automatic promotion in any given year, if not a smooth play-off victory. It is important to remember that.
But where does reality presently stand in relation to that expectation? Not every time has Elland Road been overcome by the untamed hysteria that engulfed the Leicester City victory. Numerous home games against teams in the lower half of the table have been attended by crowds that have neither required nor wanted to go all out.
Ninety percent of Leeds’ games have been expected to end in victories, and in many of those instances, a goal or two feels like par. What would you have done on August 4 if you had been informed that Leeds would lead the table on goal differential after eight games, having played one more than second?
Even though you may have thought that seemed like a really excellent season, it is still very much possible. But now that you’ve experienced it, seen how difficult the first two months were, and felt the oppression of a 17-point deficit as 2023 came to a conclusion, how do you feel about the work Farke has done?
Gordon-Levitt found it difficult to locate Deschanel’s buzzer upon entering the apartment building. On his way up the stairs, he’s suffered a couple jabs in the ribs from departing loanees, tripped and fell down two flights of stairs, but got back up again. Despite his injuries, he is at her front door, and she may decide to let him in.
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