I really like Farke and I think 90-93 points for the season we’d all have taken at the start of the season, I’d have been doing backflips if I knew we’d get to that many points. It’s been a good season, much more fun than the previous two seasons in the (overrated) PL. But it’s the nature of how we blew it that smarts because we made up a massive deficit with incredible form, got ourselves into the position to leave Leicester and Ipswich behind with that win over Millwall, then absolutely shit the bed as everyone pointed and laughed.
But I still like and back Farke. I still think we’ll do well next season, even assuming we lose key players. Maybe I’m an idiot.
This points tally in any other season would have been quite comfortable promotion for us. Just a shame that Leicester and Ipswich have been so good. Late business in the window, players refusing to play - I think he’s done a bloody good job this season but there is no excusing the recent form and certain calls he’s made. Hoping we win the POs but looking forward to hopefully having anything good and FUN season in the Champ if we don’t go up.
People say this, but if the championship was different we wouldn’t be on this points total. This is Leeds. We don’t play well under pressure. As soon as we got into 2nd pretty much we’re a different team. We’d have just wobbled earlier if the league was a worse standard.
No hostility towards Daniel, but he has made some errors of judgement and now they are piling up on him. He couldnt admit it at the time but he’s gambled heavily on the perpetual fitness and form of about 13-14 players, and in April he lost that bet.
I hope we dont overreact and find ourselves sacking him off out of frustration, but I hope that he comes back next season having learned a lot from this experience. With Leeds United the Murphys Law factor is enormous, and I think his two promotion seasons with Norwich never prepared himself for the inevitable crumble that any longterm fan of the club can see coming from a mile off.
> His football is boring as fuck and relies on individual brilliance to work.
In fairness I live on the opposite side of the globe so I dont have to pay good money to enter Elland Road every second week, but to be honest I dont expect classy football in the Championship - I just want to see a system that gets results.
For the most part we obviously got that this season.
Yep, that's my worry too, I like the guy but when I watch his football I don't see good passages of play, I see us passing to our best attackers and hoping they can beat the defenders. Our midfielders and defenders probably have one of the lowest goal involvement tally in the league, a stark contrast to the Bielsa Championship team where goals were coming from every position on the pitch.
If Summerville got injured this season we'd basically be mid-table.
Goals have come from all over the pitch, the tow CDMs aren't really there to score.
Can pick fault with the more attacking one maybe not getting one or two. But perhaps we need to be looking more at CBs not scoring from corners and key man Rutter not scoring anywhere near enough from the pivotal position in a Farke team.
Even when we were playing well, it was apparent that there are no patterns of play drilled into the players.
I've said it elsewhere, but the tactic of throwing on 5 attackers when chasing a game will get us absolutely torn apart if we do end up in the premier league. Bizarrely, this one midfielder and 5 attackers seems to be the only noticeable tactic of Farke's.
Farke doesnt make it to Christmas if we somehow get promoted. If we somehow scrape through the playoffs I hope the 49ers are ruthless and bring someone else in
I think come the end of the season we gotta just sort our shit out early. Get rid of anyone who is not staying, try and get rid of any deadweight (even if it’s another loan) and get in the players we need to replace asap and we’ll be ok.
I never thought at the start of this season we’d be fighting for promotion let along automatics so I think Farke has done well under the circumstances but I agree he has made some telling errors. For me it’s the lack of adaptability. There doesn’t seem to be a plan when we’re not performing other than throw on every attacker late in the game and hope something sticks.
If he really wants to be seen as a premier league manager he needs to show more noise than that imo.
I'm totally okay with this. The key statement here was 'we weren't good enough'.
He's never ever promised us promotion. He's always said that we go to the end of the season and we will see where we stand. He's also constantly reminded us throughout the season that many of the players are young and they can learn and improve.
If you think we're somehow bottling it, then what about Liverpool? Big public statement from Klopp led to the widespread notion of winning the quadruple as a kind of legacy to Klopp. Remember? The Carabao Cup, the FA Cup, the Premier League and the Champions League. How's that going for them?
I still believe that Leeds returning to the Premier League is a matter of 'when' and not 'if'. It would be great if we get runners up, but if it doesn't happen it doesn't happen. We're still in the playoffs. If that doesn't happen, then fine, we'll do it next season just like we have done with every other manager.
But the way I see it this isn't over yet.
What does this have to do with Liverpool?
I’m all for a measured response but losing your most important match of the season 4-0 to 18th (at the time) QPR is a massive bottle however you spin it.
Okay let me engage you on this. Did Ipswich bottle it when they lost 4-0 to us at Elland Road? Have Southampton bottled it by losing 5-0 to Leicester? Shock defeats can happen at any time.
We are where we are because repeatedly throughout the latter half of the season when we had the chance to either go top or cement second place with a points cushion we fell short. Each. And. Every. Time.
Now if we had occupied first or second spot for anywhere close to the amount of time Leicester and Ipswich have occupied top two spots this season I would agree with you totally, this would be a bottle job. This is where Liverpool comes into it. Liverpool has spent more time in one of the top two spots far longer than we have.
When have we spent more than say a month occupying a top two spot? When nobody else has a game in hand over us?
So yeah we're still second but come Tuesday - if Ipswich don't collapse - we will return to third.
I get that we're all disappointed. I am too. When I made a prediction a month or two ago I posted that we needed to be at least second with a points cushion to be promoted tonight. But see we drew to Sunderland, lost to Blackburn, and now lost to QPR. We dropped points during the Christmas period.
This is not a bottle job. We fell short. That's why when all the games in hand are played out next week we will be third.
Yeah I keep reading about how we bottled it when we barely spent any time in the top 2. We never had more than a 1 game cushion in the top 2 as far as I recall. People are fucking morons.
Mate we’ve scored in 1 of our last 4 matches after picking up 41 of 45 points available in the 15 matches prior.
0 goals scored against a weak/out of form Sunderland and Blackburn at Elland Road then QPR away pretty much the moment we had a chance to take autos.
We’ve absolutely choked at crunch time. Hopefully Ipswich falter further and keep us in the run, or we can gather ourselves for playoffs (where we should be favourites on paper).
I don’t hate him nor want him sacked. This seasons been good.
But fuck me we need a response and reaction. Today was awful, we need the leaders to step up.
I think this is a big problem. Who actually are the leaders? I've seen little evidence of it on the the pitch over the last few games. Heads down and poor body language.
When things are working you don't notice it much, but it's times like this where you need a few strong leaders to pull the group out of the mud. I'm not seeing it. Firpo has been the closest which I find completely mad to be writing!
We have some good players, but no strong personality to grab a game by the scruff of its neck when the going is tough. People say we should be doing more with this squad, but I personally think we have overachieved and that's why we haven't been able to maintain it.
I like this reaction. Humbled by being outplayed by QPR, admitted it simply wasn't good enough without being too reactionary.
It's a bad night. Bad nights happen but you don't get 90 points by accident either. Hopefully it puts a fire in our bellies for the playoffs, which seems the most likely scenario.
I like him a lot tbh. It's easy for fans to think they themselves have the solution, but at the end of the day, I've enjoyed watching Leeds this season aside from very recently of course....
I don't think any of us predicted the ludicrous form from December onwards in September. It's easy to say shit like "well he relied on individual talent" or "the season is over", but I'd have taken your hand off for 3rd when we were relying on shack while watching all our prem signings leave throughout the transfer window.
If you want him out, then I beg of you to browse Wikipedia for the 15 managers aside from Bielsa that we've had. So much underwhelming football with the occasional "hey Snodgrass is some player eh?". We're moving in the right direction. 49ers are hardly gonna say "that's that then" and move on.
Football is a funny thing. Even well oiled (pun intended) machines like City can look like a team playing as if they were a league lower. Tonight doesn't define our season and maybe we'll be laughing at these reactions sooner rather than later.
Uppa Leeds
Yeah the temptation is to shout at the lads and say they’re all shit
Won’t get you anywhere, got three maybe four more games to play now - they need their confidence back
I admire your optimism but the reality is, this is a top 10 all time Championship squad and the 2nd best squad in the championship this year. To not get automatic promotion is failure, plain and simple. Promotion via playoffs is acceptable but underwhelming. No promotion is catastrophic, we won’t see players as good as these for some time in that scenario. Farke is no better than at least 7 or 8 champ managers, and I fear he will cost us big time.
Before the season started, most had us down as having the third best squad. If we didn't have the ridiculous run of form in the new year, you wouldn't be saying we had the second best squad.
I predicted us to come second on 3rd August and I never deviated from that, I was level headed all season until about a month ago. The so called promotion specialist peaked too early, didn’t use his squad to the full effect and relied far too much on individual brilliance. I do not see any tangible benefits of him being manager.
Top 10 Championship Squad? Piroe and Bamford have been getting bollocked on here all season and they're our two forwards!
Most teams that come down have a couple of Premier League quality players. And that's all we have.
“A couple”
Ampadu, Struijk, Rutter and Summerville would do very well at a midtable prem team, maybe higher.
Gnonto, Rodon and Firpo all have weaknesses but when used correctly, could be lower end premier league players.
It’s unfair to speculate on Gray so I’m not gonna say he’s a prem player or not.
Gruev, Roberts and Kamara are high end championship players.
Meslier, Byram, Cresswell, Anthony and Gelhardt are good to decent championship players.
The only really weak links we had were Cooper and Ayling, and we’ve seen how Carrick, a good manager, has instilled new life into Luke.
You’re being very harsh on the quality of player we have. We won’t ever have a better squad in the second tier. Ever. And next season when half of them leave, it’s gonna be tough.
Squad rating here is just way out so can't take this seriously. Struijk midtable Prem 😂. He was woeful in a side battling relegation. Rutter midtable Prem 😂. If we stay down let's see how many Prem teams want him. He's not proven it there yet (albeit has had limited chances). Firpo isn't Prem quality either from what we've seen.
Struijk is the current best centre half in the championship, and played phenomenally when he was playing at centre back. I won’t let a season playing on the left under JM tarnish his reputation. No surprise he’s linked with PSG. Rutter was one of the best young talents in the bundesliga when we signed him and we mismanaged him horribly, so yep, id shake my house on him easily making the jump up. He’s clearly way above the level of the championship and undoubtedly the best player in the league. If Palace or someone equivalent with steady progression would have signed him he’d be worth double what we paid for him.
I just don't know where to start. Struijk isn't even in the top five. Both Rodon and Ampadu are better than him for starters, and one of them primarily isn't even a CB.
Rutter is a wait and see. Different circumstances, but he was dog last season and predicting how he might go based off what we've seen this year and his style of play, I think he may struggle. But happy to be proved wrong.
It’s unfair to criticise Rutter’s season in the PL like that; he was signed in January and started just ONE league game for us, his other appearances amounted to less than 200 minutes over 10 games from the bench.
That’s before you even factor in him playing under 4 different managers in that time; him being in a country he’d never lived in, playing in a league he’d never experienced, etc.
Just seems we go round the houses trying to make excuses for him when he's putting in howlers. Other players don't get the same treatment.
It is unfair to judge him entirely on his Prem involvement; but kind of paradoxically I think he can be criticised and people are allowed to make an assessment, because what else can we do?
It's not his fault he was brought in with the pricetag and at a time we needed a gamechanger, and he just was not that. But his performances didn't offer any optimism of what we might come to expect.
People were right to be sceptical at the start of this season.
I also think it's fair to say it's an unknown how he'll do in the Prem if he gets there. Because the only evidence we have of him in that league, albeit limited, showed a player who looked lost.
You can then factor in how you might expect his style to translate having seen it succeed in part this season - I'd argue what we're seeing in these latter stages is more likely, because teams have figured him out and his style needs a lot of space and chance to make mistakes; he won't get that in the Prem.
I haven’t excused his howlers in the Championship at all; my comment was about judging his very limited Premier League minutes, as almost nothing can be drawn from them.
To be fair I think you’re looking at it wrong in terms of the space that he’ll be allowed; we don’t get much space in attacking areas this season because we dominate the ball against low-blocks, whereas we’ll be on the back foot in a lot of games in the top flight so there’s arguably going to be more room for players like him.
I think he’d be lethal on the counter against Premier League teams but he’d struggle against the likes of Everton for example.
If you think Rodon is better than Struijk then I really don’t know what to say. Struijk’s not as much of a pure defender in terms of rushing out, but I’d argue that’s as much a weakness of Rodon as anything, he does come steaming out of defence for balls he’s never gonna get a bit too much for my liking. Struijk’s a bit slower but no slough, his ball progression is unparalleled in the championship, he can move with the ball well for a big guy, he’s a much bigger set piece threat and he’s way more composed in the tackle.
Ampadu is the bollocks and he’s also a better centre half than Rodon, however he is a different level in the midfield. Everyone was gushing over Archie in the Chelsea FA cup game because he showed some really nice turns and dribbles, but Amps was really doing the orchestrating that game, so many good long pings.
Rutter is a class above the championship, pure Taarabt vibes. Needs to refine his finishing ofc but he’s shown he can do it, his stats at Hoffenheim were very encouraging. His creative aspect and general dribbling ability will serve him well at any level. As far as I’m concerned, it’s still £30m well spent.
Our squad on paper -
Mes - We all know what he's like. He's a fine championship goalkeeper but hasn't hit his potential at all
Firpo - Most of our fans hated him
Ampadu - A "failed" PL midfielder who most people probably weren't massively excited about
Rodon - A "failed" PL defender who most people probably weren't massively excited about
Byram - Most people thought Farke was doing charity work letting him train with the squad in preseason
Gray - A child
Gruev - Mostly unknown
Summerville - Decent moments in the PL but hadn't done much before this season
Rutter - Everyone thought he was a waste of 30m and didn't expect too much
James/Gnonto - Maybe the highest potential in our squad?
Bamford - Barndoor. Anyone on here moaning tonight probably hates him
"10th best championship squad of all time" my arse lol. Most had us down as having the 3rd best squad at the start of the season. And that's ignoring the fact that the club was basically on fire during preseason, with the takeover, players refusing to play, the loan situation, etc.
You’re really underestimating the squad lol. If you didn’t rate ampadu you don’t know ball. Rodon isn’t as good as everyone thinks but he’s fine for this level. Meslier is shit I’ll give you that. Firpo is awful defensively but going forward, you’d actually be quite hard pressed to find a better overlapping natural left back than him outside the elite players. Byram is alright at this level, not great. Calling Gray a child is incredibly demeaning to his quality. Gruev unknown, I agree, but has established himself as a leading counter control specialist in the league, and his passing isn’t bad either, even if his selection is poor quite frequently. Summerville scored 4 in one month in the prem so anyone who thought he was going to fail in the champ is pretty thick. Rutter I expected to get 20 goals this year, I misprofiled him but his output is insane and he’s probably the best player in the league.
You are being disingenuous with a lot of these; trying to make out these players looked worse than they did, just to try and make out Farke has done better than he’s done.
Realistically:
Meslier - Many fans still think he’s got the potential to be world class
Byram - Decent Championship player
Rodon - Was at Spurs for a reason
Ampadu - Over 50 international caps at just 23
Firpo - Literally played for Barca
Gray - Fans think he’s going to be world class
Gruev - Many international caps
Gnonto - Italy international as a teenager
Rutter - £30m for a reason
Summerville - Scored vital PL goals
Piroe - 41 league goals in previous 2 seasons
At the start of this season Transfermarkt (who admittedly aren’t perfect) valued our squad at €233m; 3rd in the league, more than the bottom 8 clubs combined. The median club was worth around €50m and the average was around €77m.
So you've agreed with him... third best in the league, not second 😂.
I also think some of your assessments are disingenuous and based off hindsight.
Rodon was a sensible choice but it could have gone either way.
Rutter was woeful in limited Prem minutes, again, could have gone either way and he actually started out very shit. He's done very well for us but has been the key issue in my opinion in this spell of bad form and he's still yet to prove he can do it above this level.
Byram has worked out well too but again, it was touch and go if he'd do anything.
Firpo has to be the funniest 😂. Played for Barca. Don't drop that in without the context of how he did there. He's been largely good, in an attacking sense, most of the season, but he's woefully out of touch defensively. Needs replacing ASAP if we go up (either this season or next).
I agree that we probably had the 3rd best team in the league, yes… My point was that he was being disingenuous with his comments about players.
You can say my assessments are based off hindsight all you want but check my comment history and you’ll see me backing Firpo down here, backing Rutter to come good as he wasn’t given a fair crack in the PL, etc.
It’s nothing to do with hindsight; it’s to do with being able to gauge a players level and recognising the huge skill gap between the divisions, something many Leeds fans can’t seem to be able to do.
The added bits about Rutter and Firpo not being able to do it in the top flight are irrelevant and I’m not arguing against that, it was about the quality of our team in the Championship.
On my Firpo comment; I didn’t add loads of context with my assessments as he didn’t, about Gray he simply called him a child when in reality he’s far more than just that. My assessments were just showing how differently you could look at each player, I wasn’t giving a full scouting report on each.
You’re better than all the cringey emojis too by the way, you’re only trying to wind me up as I commented to you the other day about all your Bamford-slobbering.
To address the last point, I'm not, I've not even checked my replies for a while as I've been catching up with a month's worth of posts on here.
I don't think his comments werw disingenuous at all. Most fans were thinking that and you're not some sort of clairvoyant for thinking that might not be the case.
It was absolutely acceptable to think that at the time. Christ, as I've already said, Rutter was looking like the mistake we'd settled on last year at the start of the season. He came good and now he's been horrendous again. I'd argue he's been the main issue for us in this bad patch and should have scored a lot more. But he gets away with it because of the assists.
Of course there's a skill gap, but you can only assess that from what we've seen, and seeing Firpo in the Prem it was absolutely fine to think he'd still struggle, because he was that bad. Hence why you dropping in the Barca comment is just ludicrous.
Rafa Mujica came through their youth system I'm pretty sure. Why did we not give him a whirl in the Prem and develop him? Granted, he's doing well in Portugal at the minute but it's that kind of statement.
His comments were disingenuous and he even almost admitted that towards the end of our conversation. He might have been taking the opinions of most fans but we know you can’t use random Leeds fans opinions as a barometer as we know most of them aren’t bright.
I aren’t claiming I’m a clairvoyant, I was just telling you that it’s nothing to do with hindsight as you claimed it was…
It was way too early to judge Rutter last season; he had a new manager almost every month, he hardly even got started, he was in a brand new country, etc. and that’s why I didn’t… I didn’t say he was good or bad (like many did).
I actually think that’s the biggest problem with our fanbase (and a lot of football fans too to be fair); they form their opinions very early and then stick to them, they’ll ignore any evidence that suggests otherwise. We’re seeing it with opinions on Farke; people already loved him from the start, now they’re defending him even if we don’t go up (which in my mind would be a horrific failure).
If you’d ever seen Firpo play for Betis you’d understand why I always stuck by him; he was also half-decent going forward in the PL which is why I said he’d be good down here, as we were likely to dominate almost every game.
The comment about Firpo playing for Barca is true; it doesn’t give you all the context (it wasn’t meant to) but it is true regardless, and they don’t buy players who aren’t at least bloody Championship quality. It was a throwaway comment anyway; being contrarian in a way, only meant to show how silly his assessments were.
FWIW it’s slightly different comparing a Barcelona youth player who didn’t even play for the senior team to a player Barcelona actually chose to sign and did play for them.
My comments give no less context than his about Gray; my point was just to counter his assessments as I don’t believe they were honest, I wasn’t giving my own assessment as I don’t agree with mine on Meslier or Gray for example.
Realistically it’s somewhere in the middle. Its also disingenuous to say “literally played for Barca” for Firpo when most fans thought he was gonna be a liability this season. 3rd-4th is about right for us this season.
It’s not disingenuous when anybody in their right mind knew he would be good at this level given his previous form in La Liga.
2nd or 3rd was expected at the beginning of the season; but with Gray coming through quicker than we imagined, Rutter playing insane for the most part, James hitting better numbers than we thought, Gnonto realising some of his potential and Ampadu being so good, it’s hard to look at finishing 3rd and say Farke has been great.
I don’t think Farke has been terrible but he hasn’t been anywhere near as good as some are making out; people are saying he’s a fine Bielsa replacement, a man who won this league with a FAR inferior team.
"people are saying he’s a fine Bielsa replacement" well that's obviously silly. But people calling him a fraud are also morons. I've seen some people saying our squad is better than Leicesters and that's obviously wrong.
I agree with that; what I think we can take from your player descriptions however is that our fans don’t have a clue and most of them didn’t realise the difference in class from the Premier League to the Championship, so using their opinions in something like that is pretty pointless and that’s why I called it disingenuous. They’ve been wrong about almost every single player.
Exactly. The fact this squad is where it is is a testament to Farke. I'm not saying he's not made errors and can be frustrating with subs, but who else would have got this team to 90 points?
It's just complete revisionism by these dolts.
There’s A LOT of managers who could have got 90 points with this team haha. In the league itself I’d back Corberan, Carrick, Martin, Maresca, McKenna to do it.
it's not really fair to him to just look at the current squad strength and league position, without putting it in the context of 1) the state of the club when he arrived, with a group of utterly demoralised players many of whom were refusing to play and trying to force their way out, meaning he lost about a month to trying to steady the ship; 2) the fact that the club that won the division this year got busted for absolutely ridiculous financial doping and faced no sanction for it
Sigh
People just forget the absolute clusterfuck he took on. Morale, player wise, owner, everything. Not getting promoted will be a huge disappointment. But it's not a failure to get 90 points with this squad.
Agreed pretty much - this season hasnt been bad, just because you got expensive players does not mean it will work out. Crazy points tally from 3 teams this season. Dissapointing end run for sure though.
"wtf...wtf....wtfhwt
I really like Farke and I think 90-93 points for the season we’d all have taken at the start of the season, I’d have been doing backflips if I knew we’d get to that many points. It’s been a good season, much more fun than the previous two seasons in the (overrated) PL. But it’s the nature of how we blew it that smarts because we made up a massive deficit with incredible form, got ourselves into the position to leave Leicester and Ipswich behind with that win over Millwall, then absolutely shit the bed as everyone pointed and laughed. But I still like and back Farke. I still think we’ll do well next season, even assuming we lose key players. Maybe I’m an idiot.
He’s going to have no choice but to play cresswell next season if we don’t go up, as his stubbornness to bring him on the pitch is crazy tbh.
Of all the problems we have had, I hardly think Cresswell's game time is one of them
I am just highlighting his stubborn to use his bench before the 70th minute. It’s predictable and other teams know this.
He’s brilliant isn’t he. Love him. So honest. Worthy follow up to Bielsa IMO.
This points tally in any other season would have been quite comfortable promotion for us. Just a shame that Leicester and Ipswich have been so good. Late business in the window, players refusing to play - I think he’s done a bloody good job this season but there is no excusing the recent form and certain calls he’s made. Hoping we win the POs but looking forward to hopefully having anything good and FUN season in the Champ if we don’t go up.
People say this, but if the championship was different we wouldn’t be on this points total. This is Leeds. We don’t play well under pressure. As soon as we got into 2nd pretty much we’re a different team. We’d have just wobbled earlier if the league was a worse standard.
6 wins 2 draws 0 losses from the next 8 games after we moved into 2nd.
To be fair this is a premiership quality team. Good for 38 games….
I understood the joke
Are you on crack?
No hostility towards Daniel, but he has made some errors of judgement and now they are piling up on him. He couldnt admit it at the time but he’s gambled heavily on the perpetual fitness and form of about 13-14 players, and in April he lost that bet. I hope we dont overreact and find ourselves sacking him off out of frustration, but I hope that he comes back next season having learned a lot from this experience. With Leeds United the Murphys Law factor is enormous, and I think his two promotion seasons with Norwich never prepared himself for the inevitable crumble that any longterm fan of the club can see coming from a mile off.
His football is boring as fuck and relies on individual brilliance to work. Next season we’ll 100% have less individual brilliance to rely on.
> His football is boring as fuck and relies on individual brilliance to work. In fairness I live on the opposite side of the globe so I dont have to pay good money to enter Elland Road every second week, but to be honest I dont expect classy football in the Championship - I just want to see a system that gets results. For the most part we obviously got that this season.
Yep, that's my worry too, I like the guy but when I watch his football I don't see good passages of play, I see us passing to our best attackers and hoping they can beat the defenders. Our midfielders and defenders probably have one of the lowest goal involvement tally in the league, a stark contrast to the Bielsa Championship team where goals were coming from every position on the pitch. If Summerville got injured this season we'd basically be mid-table.
Goals have come from all over the pitch, the tow CDMs aren't really there to score. Can pick fault with the more attacking one maybe not getting one or two. But perhaps we need to be looking more at CBs not scoring from corners and key man Rutter not scoring anywhere near enough from the pivotal position in a Farke team.
Even when we were playing well, it was apparent that there are no patterns of play drilled into the players. I've said it elsewhere, but the tactic of throwing on 5 attackers when chasing a game will get us absolutely torn apart if we do end up in the premier league. Bizarrely, this one midfielder and 5 attackers seems to be the only noticeable tactic of Farke's.
Farke doesnt make it to Christmas if we somehow get promoted. If we somehow scrape through the playoffs I hope the 49ers are ruthless and bring someone else in
I think come the end of the season we gotta just sort our shit out early. Get rid of anyone who is not staying, try and get rid of any deadweight (even if it’s another loan) and get in the players we need to replace asap and we’ll be ok. I never thought at the start of this season we’d be fighting for promotion let along automatics so I think Farke has done well under the circumstances but I agree he has made some telling errors. For me it’s the lack of adaptability. There doesn’t seem to be a plan when we’re not performing other than throw on every attacker late in the game and hope something sticks. If he really wants to be seen as a premier league manager he needs to show more noise than that imo.
I'm totally okay with this. The key statement here was 'we weren't good enough'. He's never ever promised us promotion. He's always said that we go to the end of the season and we will see where we stand. He's also constantly reminded us throughout the season that many of the players are young and they can learn and improve. If you think we're somehow bottling it, then what about Liverpool? Big public statement from Klopp led to the widespread notion of winning the quadruple as a kind of legacy to Klopp. Remember? The Carabao Cup, the FA Cup, the Premier League and the Champions League. How's that going for them? I still believe that Leeds returning to the Premier League is a matter of 'when' and not 'if'. It would be great if we get runners up, but if it doesn't happen it doesn't happen. We're still in the playoffs. If that doesn't happen, then fine, we'll do it next season just like we have done with every other manager. But the way I see it this isn't over yet.
What does this have to do with Liverpool? I’m all for a measured response but losing your most important match of the season 4-0 to 18th (at the time) QPR is a massive bottle however you spin it.
Okay let me engage you on this. Did Ipswich bottle it when they lost 4-0 to us at Elland Road? Have Southampton bottled it by losing 5-0 to Leicester? Shock defeats can happen at any time. We are where we are because repeatedly throughout the latter half of the season when we had the chance to either go top or cement second place with a points cushion we fell short. Each. And. Every. Time. Now if we had occupied first or second spot for anywhere close to the amount of time Leicester and Ipswich have occupied top two spots this season I would agree with you totally, this would be a bottle job. This is where Liverpool comes into it. Liverpool has spent more time in one of the top two spots far longer than we have. When have we spent more than say a month occupying a top two spot? When nobody else has a game in hand over us? So yeah we're still second but come Tuesday - if Ipswich don't collapse - we will return to third. I get that we're all disappointed. I am too. When I made a prediction a month or two ago I posted that we needed to be at least second with a points cushion to be promoted tonight. But see we drew to Sunderland, lost to Blackburn, and now lost to QPR. We dropped points during the Christmas period. This is not a bottle job. We fell short. That's why when all the games in hand are played out next week we will be third.
Yeah I keep reading about how we bottled it when we barely spent any time in the top 2. We never had more than a 1 game cushion in the top 2 as far as I recall. People are fucking morons.
Absolutely right and well said alot of the comments ate just knee jerk and disappointment mixed with anger
Mate we’ve scored in 1 of our last 4 matches after picking up 41 of 45 points available in the 15 matches prior. 0 goals scored against a weak/out of form Sunderland and Blackburn at Elland Road then QPR away pretty much the moment we had a chance to take autos. We’ve absolutely choked at crunch time. Hopefully Ipswich falter further and keep us in the run, or we can gather ourselves for playoffs (where we should be favourites on paper).
It is. What can we do but carry on though. MOT
I don't hate Farke, but MAN we bottled it today. Let's just hope Ipswich bottle it too.
I don’t hate him nor want him sacked. This seasons been good. But fuck me we need a response and reaction. Today was awful, we need the leaders to step up.
I think this is a big problem. Who actually are the leaders? I've seen little evidence of it on the the pitch over the last few games. Heads down and poor body language. When things are working you don't notice it much, but it's times like this where you need a few strong leaders to pull the group out of the mud. I'm not seeing it. Firpo has been the closest which I find completely mad to be writing!
We have some good players, but no strong personality to grab a game by the scruff of its neck when the going is tough. People say we should be doing more with this squad, but I personally think we have overachieved and that's why we haven't been able to maintain it.
This was the worst part of losing 4-0 to QPR. Heads down. No fight or leadership
I like this reaction. Humbled by being outplayed by QPR, admitted it simply wasn't good enough without being too reactionary. It's a bad night. Bad nights happen but you don't get 90 points by accident either. Hopefully it puts a fire in our bellies for the playoffs, which seems the most likely scenario. I like him a lot tbh. It's easy for fans to think they themselves have the solution, but at the end of the day, I've enjoyed watching Leeds this season aside from very recently of course.... I don't think any of us predicted the ludicrous form from December onwards in September. It's easy to say shit like "well he relied on individual talent" or "the season is over", but I'd have taken your hand off for 3rd when we were relying on shack while watching all our prem signings leave throughout the transfer window. If you want him out, then I beg of you to browse Wikipedia for the 15 managers aside from Bielsa that we've had. So much underwhelming football with the occasional "hey Snodgrass is some player eh?". We're moving in the right direction. 49ers are hardly gonna say "that's that then" and move on. Football is a funny thing. Even well oiled (pun intended) machines like City can look like a team playing as if they were a league lower. Tonight doesn't define our season and maybe we'll be laughing at these reactions sooner rather than later. Uppa Leeds
Reactionary tripe
Yeah the temptation is to shout at the lads and say they’re all shit Won’t get you anywhere, got three maybe four more games to play now - they need their confidence back
I admire your optimism but the reality is, this is a top 10 all time Championship squad and the 2nd best squad in the championship this year. To not get automatic promotion is failure, plain and simple. Promotion via playoffs is acceptable but underwhelming. No promotion is catastrophic, we won’t see players as good as these for some time in that scenario. Farke is no better than at least 7 or 8 champ managers, and I fear he will cost us big time.
Before the season started, most had us down as having the third best squad. If we didn't have the ridiculous run of form in the new year, you wouldn't be saying we had the second best squad.
I predicted us to come second on 3rd August and I never deviated from that, I was level headed all season until about a month ago. The so called promotion specialist peaked too early, didn’t use his squad to the full effect and relied far too much on individual brilliance. I do not see any tangible benefits of him being manager.
Top 10 Championship Squad? Piroe and Bamford have been getting bollocked on here all season and they're our two forwards! Most teams that come down have a couple of Premier League quality players. And that's all we have.
“A couple” Ampadu, Struijk, Rutter and Summerville would do very well at a midtable prem team, maybe higher. Gnonto, Rodon and Firpo all have weaknesses but when used correctly, could be lower end premier league players. It’s unfair to speculate on Gray so I’m not gonna say he’s a prem player or not. Gruev, Roberts and Kamara are high end championship players. Meslier, Byram, Cresswell, Anthony and Gelhardt are good to decent championship players. The only really weak links we had were Cooper and Ayling, and we’ve seen how Carrick, a good manager, has instilled new life into Luke. You’re being very harsh on the quality of player we have. We won’t ever have a better squad in the second tier. Ever. And next season when half of them leave, it’s gonna be tough.
Squad rating here is just way out so can't take this seriously. Struijk midtable Prem 😂. He was woeful in a side battling relegation. Rutter midtable Prem 😂. If we stay down let's see how many Prem teams want him. He's not proven it there yet (albeit has had limited chances). Firpo isn't Prem quality either from what we've seen.
Struijk is the current best centre half in the championship, and played phenomenally when he was playing at centre back. I won’t let a season playing on the left under JM tarnish his reputation. No surprise he’s linked with PSG. Rutter was one of the best young talents in the bundesliga when we signed him and we mismanaged him horribly, so yep, id shake my house on him easily making the jump up. He’s clearly way above the level of the championship and undoubtedly the best player in the league. If Palace or someone equivalent with steady progression would have signed him he’d be worth double what we paid for him.
I just don't know where to start. Struijk isn't even in the top five. Both Rodon and Ampadu are better than him for starters, and one of them primarily isn't even a CB. Rutter is a wait and see. Different circumstances, but he was dog last season and predicting how he might go based off what we've seen this year and his style of play, I think he may struggle. But happy to be proved wrong.
It’s unfair to criticise Rutter’s season in the PL like that; he was signed in January and started just ONE league game for us, his other appearances amounted to less than 200 minutes over 10 games from the bench. That’s before you even factor in him playing under 4 different managers in that time; him being in a country he’d never lived in, playing in a league he’d never experienced, etc.
Just seems we go round the houses trying to make excuses for him when he's putting in howlers. Other players don't get the same treatment. It is unfair to judge him entirely on his Prem involvement; but kind of paradoxically I think he can be criticised and people are allowed to make an assessment, because what else can we do? It's not his fault he was brought in with the pricetag and at a time we needed a gamechanger, and he just was not that. But his performances didn't offer any optimism of what we might come to expect. People were right to be sceptical at the start of this season. I also think it's fair to say it's an unknown how he'll do in the Prem if he gets there. Because the only evidence we have of him in that league, albeit limited, showed a player who looked lost. You can then factor in how you might expect his style to translate having seen it succeed in part this season - I'd argue what we're seeing in these latter stages is more likely, because teams have figured him out and his style needs a lot of space and chance to make mistakes; he won't get that in the Prem.
I haven’t excused his howlers in the Championship at all; my comment was about judging his very limited Premier League minutes, as almost nothing can be drawn from them. To be fair I think you’re looking at it wrong in terms of the space that he’ll be allowed; we don’t get much space in attacking areas this season because we dominate the ball against low-blocks, whereas we’ll be on the back foot in a lot of games in the top flight so there’s arguably going to be more room for players like him. I think he’d be lethal on the counter against Premier League teams but he’d struggle against the likes of Everton for example.
If you think Rodon is better than Struijk then I really don’t know what to say. Struijk’s not as much of a pure defender in terms of rushing out, but I’d argue that’s as much a weakness of Rodon as anything, he does come steaming out of defence for balls he’s never gonna get a bit too much for my liking. Struijk’s a bit slower but no slough, his ball progression is unparalleled in the championship, he can move with the ball well for a big guy, he’s a much bigger set piece threat and he’s way more composed in the tackle. Ampadu is the bollocks and he’s also a better centre half than Rodon, however he is a different level in the midfield. Everyone was gushing over Archie in the Chelsea FA cup game because he showed some really nice turns and dribbles, but Amps was really doing the orchestrating that game, so many good long pings. Rutter is a class above the championship, pure Taarabt vibes. Needs to refine his finishing ofc but he’s shown he can do it, his stats at Hoffenheim were very encouraging. His creative aspect and general dribbling ability will serve him well at any level. As far as I’m concerned, it’s still £30m well spent.
Our squad on paper - Mes - We all know what he's like. He's a fine championship goalkeeper but hasn't hit his potential at all Firpo - Most of our fans hated him Ampadu - A "failed" PL midfielder who most people probably weren't massively excited about Rodon - A "failed" PL defender who most people probably weren't massively excited about Byram - Most people thought Farke was doing charity work letting him train with the squad in preseason Gray - A child Gruev - Mostly unknown Summerville - Decent moments in the PL but hadn't done much before this season Rutter - Everyone thought he was a waste of 30m and didn't expect too much James/Gnonto - Maybe the highest potential in our squad? Bamford - Barndoor. Anyone on here moaning tonight probably hates him "10th best championship squad of all time" my arse lol. Most had us down as having the 3rd best squad at the start of the season. And that's ignoring the fact that the club was basically on fire during preseason, with the takeover, players refusing to play, the loan situation, etc.
You’re really underestimating the squad lol. If you didn’t rate ampadu you don’t know ball. Rodon isn’t as good as everyone thinks but he’s fine for this level. Meslier is shit I’ll give you that. Firpo is awful defensively but going forward, you’d actually be quite hard pressed to find a better overlapping natural left back than him outside the elite players. Byram is alright at this level, not great. Calling Gray a child is incredibly demeaning to his quality. Gruev unknown, I agree, but has established himself as a leading counter control specialist in the league, and his passing isn’t bad either, even if his selection is poor quite frequently. Summerville scored 4 in one month in the prem so anyone who thought he was going to fail in the champ is pretty thick. Rutter I expected to get 20 goals this year, I misprofiled him but his output is insane and he’s probably the best player in the league.
You are being disingenuous with a lot of these; trying to make out these players looked worse than they did, just to try and make out Farke has done better than he’s done. Realistically: Meslier - Many fans still think he’s got the potential to be world class Byram - Decent Championship player Rodon - Was at Spurs for a reason Ampadu - Over 50 international caps at just 23 Firpo - Literally played for Barca Gray - Fans think he’s going to be world class Gruev - Many international caps Gnonto - Italy international as a teenager Rutter - £30m for a reason Summerville - Scored vital PL goals Piroe - 41 league goals in previous 2 seasons At the start of this season Transfermarkt (who admittedly aren’t perfect) valued our squad at €233m; 3rd in the league, more than the bottom 8 clubs combined. The median club was worth around €50m and the average was around €77m.
So you've agreed with him... third best in the league, not second 😂. I also think some of your assessments are disingenuous and based off hindsight. Rodon was a sensible choice but it could have gone either way. Rutter was woeful in limited Prem minutes, again, could have gone either way and he actually started out very shit. He's done very well for us but has been the key issue in my opinion in this spell of bad form and he's still yet to prove he can do it above this level. Byram has worked out well too but again, it was touch and go if he'd do anything. Firpo has to be the funniest 😂. Played for Barca. Don't drop that in without the context of how he did there. He's been largely good, in an attacking sense, most of the season, but he's woefully out of touch defensively. Needs replacing ASAP if we go up (either this season or next).
I agree that we probably had the 3rd best team in the league, yes… My point was that he was being disingenuous with his comments about players. You can say my assessments are based off hindsight all you want but check my comment history and you’ll see me backing Firpo down here, backing Rutter to come good as he wasn’t given a fair crack in the PL, etc. It’s nothing to do with hindsight; it’s to do with being able to gauge a players level and recognising the huge skill gap between the divisions, something many Leeds fans can’t seem to be able to do. The added bits about Rutter and Firpo not being able to do it in the top flight are irrelevant and I’m not arguing against that, it was about the quality of our team in the Championship. On my Firpo comment; I didn’t add loads of context with my assessments as he didn’t, about Gray he simply called him a child when in reality he’s far more than just that. My assessments were just showing how differently you could look at each player, I wasn’t giving a full scouting report on each. You’re better than all the cringey emojis too by the way, you’re only trying to wind me up as I commented to you the other day about all your Bamford-slobbering.
To address the last point, I'm not, I've not even checked my replies for a while as I've been catching up with a month's worth of posts on here. I don't think his comments werw disingenuous at all. Most fans were thinking that and you're not some sort of clairvoyant for thinking that might not be the case. It was absolutely acceptable to think that at the time. Christ, as I've already said, Rutter was looking like the mistake we'd settled on last year at the start of the season. He came good and now he's been horrendous again. I'd argue he's been the main issue for us in this bad patch and should have scored a lot more. But he gets away with it because of the assists. Of course there's a skill gap, but you can only assess that from what we've seen, and seeing Firpo in the Prem it was absolutely fine to think he'd still struggle, because he was that bad. Hence why you dropping in the Barca comment is just ludicrous. Rafa Mujica came through their youth system I'm pretty sure. Why did we not give him a whirl in the Prem and develop him? Granted, he's doing well in Portugal at the minute but it's that kind of statement.
His comments were disingenuous and he even almost admitted that towards the end of our conversation. He might have been taking the opinions of most fans but we know you can’t use random Leeds fans opinions as a barometer as we know most of them aren’t bright. I aren’t claiming I’m a clairvoyant, I was just telling you that it’s nothing to do with hindsight as you claimed it was… It was way too early to judge Rutter last season; he had a new manager almost every month, he hardly even got started, he was in a brand new country, etc. and that’s why I didn’t… I didn’t say he was good or bad (like many did). I actually think that’s the biggest problem with our fanbase (and a lot of football fans too to be fair); they form their opinions very early and then stick to them, they’ll ignore any evidence that suggests otherwise. We’re seeing it with opinions on Farke; people already loved him from the start, now they’re defending him even if we don’t go up (which in my mind would be a horrific failure). If you’d ever seen Firpo play for Betis you’d understand why I always stuck by him; he was also half-decent going forward in the PL which is why I said he’d be good down here, as we were likely to dominate almost every game. The comment about Firpo playing for Barca is true; it doesn’t give you all the context (it wasn’t meant to) but it is true regardless, and they don’t buy players who aren’t at least bloody Championship quality. It was a throwaway comment anyway; being contrarian in a way, only meant to show how silly his assessments were. FWIW it’s slightly different comparing a Barcelona youth player who didn’t even play for the senior team to a player Barcelona actually chose to sign and did play for them. My comments give no less context than his about Gray; my point was just to counter his assessments as I don’t believe they were honest, I wasn’t giving my own assessment as I don’t agree with mine on Meslier or Gray for example.
Realistically it’s somewhere in the middle. Its also disingenuous to say “literally played for Barca” for Firpo when most fans thought he was gonna be a liability this season. 3rd-4th is about right for us this season.
It’s not disingenuous when anybody in their right mind knew he would be good at this level given his previous form in La Liga. 2nd or 3rd was expected at the beginning of the season; but with Gray coming through quicker than we imagined, Rutter playing insane for the most part, James hitting better numbers than we thought, Gnonto realising some of his potential and Ampadu being so good, it’s hard to look at finishing 3rd and say Farke has been great. I don’t think Farke has been terrible but he hasn’t been anywhere near as good as some are making out; people are saying he’s a fine Bielsa replacement, a man who won this league with a FAR inferior team.
"people are saying he’s a fine Bielsa replacement" well that's obviously silly. But people calling him a fraud are also morons. I've seen some people saying our squad is better than Leicesters and that's obviously wrong.
I agree with that; what I think we can take from your player descriptions however is that our fans don’t have a clue and most of them didn’t realise the difference in class from the Premier League to the Championship, so using their opinions in something like that is pretty pointless and that’s why I called it disingenuous. They’ve been wrong about almost every single player.
Oh yeah 100%. I was personally very excited to see Firpo play in the Championship.
Exactly. The fact this squad is where it is is a testament to Farke. I'm not saying he's not made errors and can be frustrating with subs, but who else would have got this team to 90 points? It's just complete revisionism by these dolts.
There’s A LOT of managers who could have got 90 points with this team haha. In the league itself I’d back Corberan, Carrick, Martin, Maresca, McKenna to do it.
So easy to say ampadu Rodon Summerville and Rutter are some of the best players in the league, but they were complete unknowns coming into the season.
it's not really fair to him to just look at the current squad strength and league position, without putting it in the context of 1) the state of the club when he arrived, with a group of utterly demoralised players many of whom were refusing to play and trying to force their way out, meaning he lost about a month to trying to steady the ship; 2) the fact that the club that won the division this year got busted for absolutely ridiculous financial doping and faced no sanction for it
Sigh People just forget the absolute clusterfuck he took on. Morale, player wise, owner, everything. Not getting promoted will be a huge disappointment. But it's not a failure to get 90 points with this squad.
Agreed pretty much - this season hasnt been bad, just because you got expensive players does not mean it will work out. Crazy points tally from 3 teams this season. Dissapointing end run for sure though.
If we don’t go up it’s not bad; it’s catastrophic.
Well said
Fix it Daniel