QPR 4-0 Leeds United: They have to win

It's hard to get mad at a manager who has guided Leeds United to 90 Championship points, doing enough for promotion in almost any other season. But if I snapped at Marcelo Bielsa, I can snap at anyone, and using the same words. Daniel Farke, what the fuck was that?

The circumstances are similar, although it wasn't until Bielsa's second season in charge that I lost my temper with him. The occasion was losing, again, to Wigan Athletic at home, and the core of my frustration sounds familiar to the frustration now: wishing Bielsa would change things, even though it was too late to change things, and even though things, as they were, were not actually bad. Leeds were 2nd in the Championship, as they are now. They had the fourth best attack, as they do now, and the second best defence, as they do now. And they were on the way to promotion. We'll see how that part goes this time.

Bielsa's insistence on sticking with the plan turned out, despite games like every time we played Wigan and that time away to Nottingham Forest, to be the right decision that season. And Daniel Farke? In the aftermath of a 4-0 defeat at QPR it feels like he should ignore that lesson and immediately change everything within his power. He probably won't do that: he'll probably do what Bielsa did, and try to do the same things better. The problem, though, is that despite insisting that he will stick to his principles and trust in his Championship winning history, Farke may have already changed too much in this run-in. And now the things he can't change are putting this season out of his control.

We can talk about a lot of causes for United's April sorrow, but we can use the midfield as a nexus. The long unbeaten run of this year was helped by a midfield partnership between Glen Kamara and Ilia Gruev. In recent weeks, sometimes due to injuries and then by managerial choice, the midfield has tended towards Gruev and Archie Gray. It's been the wrong change at the wrong time, standing out oddly against the manager's own arguments.

With Pat Bamford's knee too swollen and bruised for him to play against QPR, Joel Piroe deputised at no.9 ahead of Mateo Joseph who, Farke has argued, would be one young player too many for an already inexperienced side, too much of a risk at this vital stage of the season. The only alternatives on his bench, he said, were "youth and emotions." And yet Farke has willingly been taking the risk of using Gray, a youth just turned eighteen, in the heart of midfield, and at Loftus Road he watched sullenly from the dugout as QPR dominated Leeds there from the first whistle. The sense of this change, if there is any, has been to bring Sam Byram's experience to the defence; but with a season at right-back under his belt, Gray was looking more comfortable there than Byram has lately. Much as I love little Sam and dream his promotion dreams with him, to make up for being forced out by Massimo Cellino and missing out on our good times, his has been the wrong experience in the wrong part of the pitch at the wrong time.

Glen Kamara, meanwhile, mundane as he often is, has been missed. As Farke often points out, Gray and Joseph are not the only young players around the first team — eight of the starters at QPR were under 25 years old. He also made the point, although it was a long time ago, that a lot of these players were part, last season, of an abominable relegation team, and that it takes a lot of work to drag players out of losing habits. That point bears repeating now, because the lesson from Loftus Road might be that this work is far from finished.

Georginio Rutter, Crysencio Summerville and Wilf Gnonto all went through relegation last season, all clearly hated it, and all played at QPR as if they were those old selves again. Illan Meslier, last season, was taken out of the team both for his own good and so that Sam Allardyce could look like he was doing something, and is now reverting to the player who, under pressure, can't stop goals anymore. The most interesting example might be from outside that team: the captain, Ethan Ampadu, who in each of his last three seasons has been relegated. Still only 23, Ampadu is expected to lead our team to promotion, but without having experienced a team under pressure getting through it to success.

Which brings me back to Glen Kamara and his solitary Scottish Premiership winners' medal. He's got one for the Scottish Cup, too. It might not be much, but in a starting eleven with an average age of 23, only three of whom have ever played more than 34 games in a single season before, a 28 year old with more than 200 career appearances, a league winner's medal, and a points per match average greater than 2ppm in his last six seasons, Kamara has things on his CV that Leeds — as Farke has often acknowledged — are lacking elsewhere.

The names might be stretching a coincidence, but by choosing Gray, Farke has been performing what could be called a reverse-Kamara. In our 1989/90 promotion season, David Batty was the breakout star, turning 21 that December and winning England Under-21 call-ups from Division Two. And, with four games of the season to go, Howard Wilkinson dropped him. At the end of January Wilko had bought Chris Kamara, a 32 year old midfielder who had played more than 600 games and feared nothing. His temperament was crucial. At Bournemouth on the final day, Lee Chapman headed in Kamara's cross to win the title.

David Batty became a much better midfielder than Chris Kamara. Archie Gray will become a much better midfielder than Glen Kamara. But there are times when what you've done is more important than what you could do. I don't think it's a coincidence that United's worst performance of the season came under pressure and under floodlights under the steep stands at Loftus Road, a situation and a stadium unlike any that players like Gray, Summerville or Rutter have played in before. Rather than striding into the fray like a team of winners who have seen it all and done it all, Leeds played the first twenty minutes like what they are — a bunch of talented kids whose effervescent abilities have taken them to a place where they're being challenged like never before. And they didn't pass the test. It got to them. They didn't cope.

Part of this is circumstance, a consequence of the squad Farke inherited. As of June 2023, Leeds United had no midfielders. It's a part of the pitch that has never quite settled this season. First it was Gray and Ampadu, then Ampadu and Kamara, then Kamara and Gruev, now it's Gruev and Gray. The lack of goals from that area has been highlighted, but maybe the greater fault has been not dominating there, not making the centre circle a place other teams dread to go.

Part of it is also choice, and in recent games I think Farke has chosen wrong. The common denominator in United's best form this season has been Glen Kamara in midfield. He was bought to add experience and control. When those attributes were needed most, at this crucial part of the season, Farke has left him out. It's not a simple case of Kamara being the one player to make every difference — he played in the defeat at Coventry, the draw with Sunderland. He's not Patrick Vieira. But it's a surprise for Farke to apparently not trust an experienced player, after 32 starts in midfield, to perform in the last few games. And it's a case of the knock-on effect caused by leaving him out.

With Kamara in midfield, Gray could have continued being a positive influence from right-back, instead of coming under pressure in midfield that he hasn't coped with. Or Farke could have chosen Byram at right-back, putting Gray on the bench, using the remaining balance between youth and experience to give Mateo Joseph his shot, perhaps with Piroe behind him instead of post-hernia-op Rutter to ensure the forward line was not all kids. This would also have saved Piroe from his own performance at Loftus Road, where as a no.9 he was a nothing. His example — 200-odd career games, 72 goals — was a good way of disproving all my claims about experience being important, so thanks for that too, Joel.

These hypotheticals are, of course, easy with hindsight. But they're hard, too, because they're based on the things Farke has been saying, the risks he's been talking about, the problems he has predicted — and then roamed, blundering, into anyway. He said the run-in was not the time to change things — he changed things. He says the team is inexperienced — and he leaves experienced players out of key positions. He said he knew what he was doing. Um. Well.

Ninety points say Farke does know what he's doing. But that those points haven't already secured promotion suggests Farke has been caught out. 26 wins he wanted, and 75 goals, and then it could be feet up time on the sofa, coffee and cake. It hasn't turned out that way, and suddenly Farke has questions to answer, problems to solve, and Joe Gelhardt and Jamie Shackleton are back on the pitch as if this was matchday two and Leeds were losing in Birmingham again. Whether it's on Saturday against Southampton or next month in the play-offs, Farke now has to take his players to places where they've never been and won before, and this time, they have to win. ★彡