Leeds United: A win in Wales & thoughts on Farke
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00:00Well, welcome back to the Marching On Together Leeds United podcast. I'm joined once again
00:05by my co-host Dan Daniel and we have Lee back from his jolly holidays. Not that he's missed
00:11too much at the Burnley game, of course.
00:14I still watched it. Don't worry about that, unfortunately, should I say, but yeah, not
00:19the best of course, things slightly more back on track with a with a win at Cardiff and
00:24that's where we're going to start today. So a 2-0 win away from home against, let's be
00:29honest, struggling Cardiff. I think they've lifted a few people up three points so far
00:33this season. But again, it's not one where you can just sort of turn up and expect to
00:38win. It's a game that Leeds had to go and win and that's what they did. And it was an
00:40ideal response to their disappointment that was the Burnley loss.
00:44Yeah, they had to win there 100%. If they're not winning at Cardiff, then you'd be seriously
00:49worried in terms of a team. Not that you can judge anything on one game, but if a team
00:53going for all-night promotion who hope to get to the Premier League aren't winning
00:56at the bottom of the table, Cardiff side, who had one point and have still got one point
00:59and who played three quarters of the game with 10 men, then you'd be very, very worried,
01:03wouldn't you really? And obviously, 2-0 doesn't look particularly dominant on the sort of
01:08scoreline figures. But I mean, they dominated pretty much everything else. I mean, the only
01:12reason why it wasn't more than 2-0 is because they didn't take the chances. Obviously, a
01:15missed penalty. Pascal Stroik's penalty saved. Ramazani obviously got the first goal fine
01:21finish, but he should have scored another one. Aronson, he looked harder to miss his
01:25chance and score it. So, there was a few, obviously, other chances and then they should
01:29have, I mean, probably should have scored four or five, really. And obviously, Pascal,
01:34sorry, right at the end, Joe Peru, make again the second goal to finally sort of put them
01:38to bed as such. Because when it's, as Daniel Farker said himself, when it's 1-0, you never
01:42know. All it takes is sort of like one marvellous shot or error or something and all of a sudden
01:46the other team is back in it. And that has to be the concern. They're not taking the
01:50chances. And obviously, that also was the case against Burnley, really, wasn't it?
01:54Just not taking the chances. I mean, I'm epitomised by the Mateo Joseph miss when
01:57he was clean through one-on-one and watching that one abroad. I mean, when he went through
02:02and he missed that, you just almost thought straight away, when you miss in those, is
02:05it not going to be Leeds' day? And that's the way it was. But that's gone now, as has
02:09the Portsmouth game at the start of the season, which we keep harping on about where they
02:12should have won, but they didn't. These games, when they've gone, they've gone. You've
02:16got to move on and that's all Leeds could do. They had to move on. They had to go to
02:19Cardiff and the bottom line was they had to get three points and they did that. And I
02:23think it's fair to say that amongst the fan base, there was a bit of discontent about
02:29the way the game went. It wasn't particularly exciting. It wasn't particularly thrilling,
02:33this, that and the other. And I get that totally. But the main thing that matters is getting
02:37out of this division. And it's a difficult question to answer because it's like, well,
02:42how much does style and substance matter, really? And it does matter because football
02:46is an entertainment business, isn't it? And you want to be entertained. But every Leeds
02:50fan will tell you, I'm sure the main thing that matters is getting out of this division
02:53and getting out of it automatically because nobody wants to play off again. And I think
02:56really, basically, you can't really judge it until a lot deeper in the season and certainly
03:01until they've played a lot more bigger sides. Obviously, you could argue that they've already
03:05played potentially the biggest rivals of all in Burnley and lost to them. And that's a fair
03:09call because it was obviously, they did fall to a defeat in that game no matter how well
03:12they played. So I think the jury's out to a degree sort of thing at the moment. What is
03:17it? 11 points so far. I mean, it's not a bad start. It's not amazing, that's for sure,
03:22because there's obviously five teams with more points than them. So that tells you all
03:25you need to know. And you can often say two points a game will get you up, but it didn't
03:31last season. And two points a game wouldn't have been enough. So they're not even at two
03:35points a game at the moment, not quite. So I think they need to sort of up the ante a
03:38bit more. Obviously, I don't think the championship will be quite as good as it was last season,
03:43with minus your sort of Leicester and Ipswich in Southampton. But you never know that until
03:48the end of the season. So just a lot of unanswered questions, really. And I think a lot of people
03:53just don't really know at the moment what to expect and where this is going in terms
03:56of fans and everything. And I'm certainly the same as that. I struggle to sort of 100%
04:01say how this is going to go. But looking at the Cardiff game, they needed to go there.
04:06They needed to win, especially with everybody else winning, even though it's early days
04:09on the table. And the bottom line is they got the job done. But I think the main takeaways
04:14from it certainly, again, are not taking the chances, as Daniel Farke alluded to afterwards.
04:20And then obviously the penalty miss, which is obviously going to be a big debate over
04:23who should take penalties. But they got the job done. And yeah, after the Burnley defeat,
04:29results-wise, anyway, back on track. Yeah, just on that, I'm keen to talk about that,
04:34actually, the sort of the style of a substance thing, obviously. It's a very different sort
04:38of leads to how perhaps they were a few years ago under Marcelo Bielsa, not the swashbuckling
04:44attacking football that he played. But last season, at least it was effective. And despite
04:49perhaps a bit of a rut towards the end, for the most part, it was good. This season hasn't been
04:56quite the same as even last season, but they have picked up some decent results, albeit some not so
05:02good ones. So, what's the thoughts on Daniel Farke as a manager? Is he well-liked at Leeds
05:09at the moment, do you think? Or do you think that some people have their doubts a little bit?
05:14Yeah, I think so. And I think he absolutely deserves another crack at it and a real fair
05:19crack at the whip at this season. I mean, you've got to remember, he's obviously gone up twice
05:22with Norwich as champions. And both those two times, they had slow starts. That's the first
05:26thing to remember. Obviously, people will always talk about last season and say that ultimately,
05:32even though there was such a turbulent summer, that Leeds should still have gone up and probably
05:36gone up automatically. And even if they didn't go up automatically, which obviously we all know
05:40they didn't, they probably still should have won the playoffs. And the bottom line is,
05:43they just didn't turn up in the biggest game of all in the playoff final against Southampton.
05:46I mean, they were just really poor in it and it just never got going in that game whatsoever. So,
05:50they're the things you can say. But Daniel Farke has obviously got a fantastic championship record.
05:55In terms of style and stuff, when you're looking at the play, yeah, it's obviously very different
05:58to the Bielsa football. But I think that just about any team is going to be different to a
06:02Bielsa team because Bielsa is unique. And that was just something revolutionary when that came
06:06to Leeds. And obviously, not surprisingly, ended up taking them up in the ultimate style
06:10as brilliant champions. And the sort of thing that you see very hard to ever being repeated,
06:14even being close to that. But they are entertaining under Daniel Farke in their own right at times and
06:19stuff. It's just slightly different. Like a lot of games last season, to give them fair
06:24dues, they were very entertaining and played very, very good football at times. So, you can't
06:28forget that. The thing that's different this season, which is easy to forget, is they've lost
06:32Christ Enzi of Somerville and Jorginho Routier. And you don't like pin it all on, obviously,
06:36Andarci Gray, but obviously, he's not an attacking player as such. But you don't like pin it on just
06:41like one or two people. But they were big players that could just sort of like flick a switch and
06:46turn it on and stuff. And if you lose those two players out of your team, then that is going to
06:49obviously affect the entertainment value. And I don't think there's any doubt about that. So,
06:52you've got to remember that.