Coming soon: a football club
Players are leaving but not arriving. The ones left behind are being taught to play wi' ball but not wi'out ball. The defending and stuff, hopefully, is coming next week. But in the meantime we had to play Manchester United.
I don't know if playing Manchester United in Oslo was always the plan for this week, but we do know that what comes next has been cobbled together for a hopeful next best thing. On Sunday 23rd July Fulham are playing Brentford in Philadelphia as part of the Premier League's USA Summer Series, and that was supposed to be us, not Fulham. But we were kicked off that tour before we were even relegated when our divisional status became a greater reputational risk than the Premier League could handle, and since we confirmed their fears we'll be playing Monaco in York that weekend and kicking off our season at home to Cardiff a couple of weeks later, a week before the Premier League season begins.
It's all coming up quite soon and 21 Leeds players running around in Norway in a smart new kit was the summer's big signpost that stuff needs doing, soon. "In the last six days, we have just worked on our possession and how we want to work with the ball," Daniel Farke said after the games, "and not at all on what we want to do against the ball." (The sound you can hear is Paul Heckingbottom retching, horrified.) That's where Leeds are at right now. Players are leaving but not arriving. The ones left behind are being taught to play wi' ball but not wi'out ball. The defending and stuff, hopefully, is coming next week. But in the meantime we had to play Manchester United.
Neither the performance nor the result were, in the end, all that bad. And as usual with pre-season friendlies, this was a game better enjoyed by the people who were there. Some (spenny!) beers, a sing-song, a chance to see your favourite team playing live and even meet them and a few ex-players at the supporter events. Tuning into a stream had none of these benefits, and mostly just downsides. For the Twitter-refreshing obsessive, it was confirmation that the squad is unbuilt and unready. For the casual fan, it might have been the first they've seen of Leeds all summer so the first time of asking, what's going on? For the world beyond Leeds, it was Mason Mount's debut, a painful reminder that we're back to being a sideshow alongside the real business of football.
What we have got from this game, though, is a start to the story. There's nothing really interesting to say about it now — Luis Sinisterra looked good, Georginio Rutter looked promising, Archie Gray has a wicked shot on him. But it's a game I think we'll hear much more of in the future. The opening of the Daniel Farke chapter, the inauguration of the 49ers Enterprises era, the beginning of the post-Radrizzani story, the start of whatever comes after what should never have come after Bielsa.
If the next few years are a glorious success, then when the story is told it will begin with an inauspicious afternoon in Oslo, where with no new signings and a depleted squad nobody could have guessed Farke was about to inspire promotion at the first attempt, en route to Leeds United's return to Europe.
Or if the next few months are a terrible disaster, the story of Farke's failure will have its beginning in Oslo, on a damp afternoon when Mason Mount stole the headlines and a depleted Leeds United squad was an early sign of descending gloom that Farke didn't stand a chance of lifting.
Choose your own adventure.
Farke is choosing to be quite open about what's not happening, starting with that line about not working on defending yet. Rebuilding the squad is also a work in not-much-progress, and Farke gave the impression that he's not yet getting everything he needs from the summer's activity. In other words, with most players leaving on loan, he's not getting much money to spend on new ones.
"We have, of course, already lost a few players and everyone knows about the situation," he said. "They went out on loan so we don't get any money out of this. It's a situation after relegation. There are a few clauses and we have to accept it. It's no complaining about this.
"The situation is like it is. We just have to make sure and have to be fully aware this will never happen again in the future."
Exactly what he's referring to isn't clear, whether relegation should never happen again, or loan clauses, but the vibe is general — 'this' should never happen again in the future, all — waves hands — 'this'. To never again let a bunch of players leave, taking in no money, then take the rest to Oslo not knowing how many of them will be leaving, without bringing in any new players, after being relegated, and falling into a calendar trap of ending one season late and starting the next one early, while a number of players go away to an international tournament and come back after pre-season has started, while the paperwork for a change of ownership is being shuffled around desks at the Football League, and the only people talking about the takeover are golfers between rounds, while a new manager only has time to teach half his plans, before kicking off against last season's third best team, who just bought a player for around half what our entire club is changing hands for, and also happen to be our bitterest rivals.
Our new kit looked class, though, so that was good.
And as a line in the sand, it feels like a pretty good one. Oslo has given us a starting point: everything that happens next will start from here. And it's given us something to measure: how soon and how far away will Farke and 49ers Enterprises get Leeds from ever being in this situation again?
As for right now, Farke says: "We accept the situation and we know it’s a difficult task, but if it would be easy everyone could do it." So he's learnt the first lesson about Leeds United. It tends to be hard work, here. ★彡
(Originally published at The Square Ball)