Failing so soon
Brace yourself, because the three weeks left in the transfer window are likely to be tougher to take even than the summer so far.
Early season nights in the Carabao Cup can be pleasant occasions, although not if you're Accrington Stanley's Will Hatfield getting kicked up the neck by Gaetano Berardi, I guess. But I once didn't hate Michael Brown for a minute because he scored a banger I could barely see through the blazing sunshine, and that's the power of what connoisseurs have come to regard as 'an extra pre-season friendly, as a treat'.
Against Shrewsbury on Wednesday night Leeds put out a stronger team than expected, if only due to necessity. Then they played worse than anybody hoped, conceded a goal, and got booed at half-time. It’s a bit early in the season for hackles to be so far up, and it was a bit early in the night. Half past eight, not even dark yet, and nobody was happy at the one game of the season that definitely should not matter.
Perhaps this was a good thing. The stands were packed with young fans being taken along to Elland Road for the first time, and instead of being taken in by such fables as 'a Leeds team that wins easily' they got a good dose first of what they're letting themselves in for if they let football lure them into a life of fandom. See all these angry adults, hear all these loud voices, yelling obscenities at some young Norwegian who didn't stop a goal? Do they look like they're having fun? Do you want to join in?
United's unbeaten start to the season has suggested so far that patience is a luxury that will be withheld from Daniel Farke and 49ers Enterprises. After yearning all last season for a Leeds team that can pass, it took forty minutes of the first game — and two sloppily conceded goals — for fans to start berating Liam Cooper for not getting the ball forward. It was the same in the first half against Shrewsbury, when Leeds had 71 per cent possession and completed 319 passes, returning these stats to pre-Marsch levels, but drew ire because so many of those passes formed a forlorn search for imagination.
That's as much an office failure as a team failure, and that's still the dominant theme of this late summer after the football has started. There should be a creative player up there, in that gap behind the nearest thing we can find to a striker, and the club's new owners should have bought one. The club's new owners, though, were spending their evening smarting from their failure to sign a third right-back and bracing themselves for news about Wilf Gnonto's apparent refusal to play hitting social media on the full-time whistle. This is football now: we go to watch the players, we end up yelling at executives.
A lot of the shouting is valid. Paraag Marathe's self-professed prowess with agents and players and his aim for 'aggression' in the transfer window to help Leeds back to the Premier League is jarring with the tepid bystanderism of the weeks that have followed. As Farke keeps pointing out in his press conferences, the club are struggling to get into the 'driver's seat' as a result of contracts and clauses written while the new owners were mere part-owners. But did they, uh, ever ask about, y'know, stuff like this? During the five years while they were minority owners, when Marathe was on the board, when he was meeting weekly on Zoom calls with the folks in Leeds? What did they actually ever talk about?
Their position now is passive not by choice, but by the whims of other clubs and the fates of various highly prized groins and hamstrings. How much Leeds need to do or are able to do depends on what valuable players like Tyler Adams, Jackie Harrison, Wilf Gnonto and Illan Meslier do, among others, and the clubs who may want to buy them aren't operating with much urgency. If only Arsenal had been interested in a few of them, one club that did its business early. But the Premier League season starts this weekend and Spurs are still sorting out Harry Kane, Liverpool are just now shoving Chelsea aside to buy Moisés Caicedo. That last deal must increase the likelihood of Chelsea buying Adams, but given all indications were that they were planning to buy both, couldn't they have given us a cheque, like, six weeks ago? That might have helped Leeds, in turn, pay for Max Aarons weeks back before he was even a twinkle in Bournemouth's eye.
Brace yourself, because the three weeks left in the transfer window are likely to be tougher to take even than the summer so far. The post-relegation loan clauses at least made the players who had them easy to move. Of the ones who remain, injuries to Adams and Harrison might have their suitors waiting to see how near to fit they get before deciding to take a chance on paying their release fees, while it's the lack of release clauses that will be holding clubs back from Gnonto and Meslier, uncertain about a bidding war. Leeds United's new ownership group, a gaggle of hyped up golfers and ice hockey guys, are being forced to get their first soccer thrills from waiting by their inboxes, waiting for players, agents and other clubs to determine Leeds United's fate.
In the midst of all this is seen-it-all-before realist Daniel Farke. One of his favourite phrases is, "I don't complain, because if it would be easy, everyone could do this job." While not complaining as such he has had plenty to say about how Leeds shouldn't be in this situation, but he has sweetened the dose by pointing out that this is basically just what getting relegated is like. You lose again and again on the pitch, then you lose again and again off it, and getting back into the driver's seat and re-taking control is not as easy as it sounds. There's no way around it, short of imprisoning a few millionaire footballers and their agents: for the next three weeks, the 49ers and Farke aren't running this club. ★彡
(Originally published at The Square Ball)