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When Leeds United sold £140m of playing talent last summer, Daniel Farke deviated from accepted managerial convention and declined to throw his toys out of the pram. Farke is a little too unconventional, a little too resistant to groupthink, to always do the expected and his club’s owner, the San Francisco-based 49er Enterprises, is set to reap the benefits.
The German’s unusual amalgam of high emotional intelligence and advanced numeracy have helped provide the framework for the freshly secured promotion to the Premier League Leeds so narrowly missed out on last May.
As the stars of that campaign – Crysencio Summerville, Archie Gray and Georginio Rutter – departed and Elland Road regulars despaired, Farke held his nerve. With English football’s spending rules complied with, the manager reconstructed a slimmed-down squad in a manner befitting his former roles as an economics student and the sporting director of Germany club Lippstadt.
In, among others, came Ao Tanaka for £3.5m from Fortuna Düsseldorf, Jayden Bogle for £5m from Sheffield United and the Tottenham loanee Manor Solomon. While Japan’s Tanaka proved one of the second tier’s best anchoring midfielders, Bogle shone as an increasingly outstanding attacking right-back and Israel’s Solomon impressed on the left wing.
Farke had never really wanted to be a coach. As a third-tier player in Germany he studied economics and became more interested in contracts, taxes and balance sheets than tactics. His dream was to remain in football as a sporting director and it came true at Lippstadt, where he oversaw the construction of a new stadium.
Fate intervened when Farke, temporarily combining that job with training the team, secured nine wins in 10 games. An offer to coach Borussia Dortmund’s second string scuppered a subsequent plan to take a sabbatical travelling the world, and the experience of working alongside his friend Thomas Tuchel, then Dortmund’s first-team manager, helped persuade him he was not too shabby at tactics after all.
Three promotions from the Championship, the first two with Norwich, have ensued, the most recent showcasing the 48-year-old’s ability to create a Leeds team arguably exceeding the sum of its parts. If Tanaka, Bogle and, should he stay, Solomon have the ability to hold their own in the top tier, so too do the Welsh trio Ethan Ampadu (Farke’s excellent captain), Joe Rodon and Daniel James.
This time last year Farke said his team would have been promoted had Patrick Bamford stayed fit but 12 months on the Championship has been escaped despite an injury-plagued Bamford kicking far fewer balls than his manager would have liked. Much of that is down to Joël Piroe’s 19 goals but the limitations of Piroe’s all-round game dictate that a centre-forward, along with a No 10 and, quite possibly, a goalkeeper, seems to be a transfer priority.
If Bamford undoubtedly retains the quality to excel at Premier League level his fitness record leaves question marks, and Illan Meslier’s goalkeeping talent has been undermined by a creeping susceptibility to making mistakes under pressure, particularly at set plays. Meslier is far too gifted – his footwork is top-drawer – for the Frenchman’s career to be written off but he quite possibly needs a change of scenery. Farke, bravely, replaced Meslier with Karl Darlow during the run-in but, although the former Newcastle No 2 proved solidity personified, the manager’s long-running persistence with Meslier suggests he may not quite trust Darlow at the highest level.
As Leeds enjoy the moment, such decisions remain for the future. “Don’t stress me with the Premier League right now,” Farke said after confirmation of his team’s promotion on Monday night. “We want to become an established Premier League side but lots of work, lots of ambition, is needed.”
It perhaps does not help that Elland Road’s much-admired chief executive, Angus Kinnear, is leaving for Everton this summer. The most recent accounts (compiled before those £140m player sales) show that Leeds sustained a £60.8m pre-tax loss during 2023-24 and had a Championship record £127.6m turnover. That latter figure is relatively modest by Premier League standards, dictating that staying within profitability and sustainability rules will remain an issue next season.
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“The domestic transfer market’s overpriced,” Farke said recently. “That means we have to be creative and think outside the box; we’re increasingly looking outside Europe.”
Matters are further complicated by the need for 49er Enterprises to invest significant funds in updating and expanding an outdated Elland Road, with a formal planning application due for imminent submission to the city council.
It appears Farke may soon need to draw heavily on the emotional balance and original thinking that shine through during his invariably sure-footed yet always interesting media addresses. Club officials say his dressing-room persona is little different but it will be intriguing to see whether a manager uncomfortably aware that last season’s cohort of promoted clubs are coming straight back down will take the height and physique of new signings into account.
If a possession-dominant, technically accomplished Leeds are, by common consensus, the Championship’s best side, they are comparatively diminutive. At a time when athleticism and physicality are increasingly prized top-flight attributes, that matters.
“In the past 21 years this club has spent only three seasons in the Premier League but that’s where Leeds belongs,” said Farke. “My job was to get us there. Now it’s keeping us there.”
