Tuftyball, or Leeds United adapting to the realities

There was one of those moments at Elland Road on Monday night, around the 70th minute, when Leeds United had been toiling and moiling their way towards Sunderland's goal by increments since half-time. The ball, in the Peacocks' half, was given by Ethan Ampadu to Illan Meslier, back to Ampadu, back to Meslier, and there were groans in the crowd. Meslier gave it to Joe Rodon and he gave it back, and there were angry shouts. Via Ampadu the ball went to Ilia Gruev, who turned into space in the centre circle, turned back, and after more swapped passes the ball was back with Ampadu. And the voices on the terraces were becoming a chorus of dismay.

Leeds were over the halfway line now though, and so were Sunderland, and that was the thing, and six quick passes later Joel Piroe was on the edge of the penalty area smashing a shot on target that Anthony Patterson had to get down fast to parry as Brenden Aaronson and Junior Firpo rushed in for a rebound. And a lot of the tension of watching Daniel Farke's Leeds was summed up in those moments, football that pushes you to the brink of frustration then seesaws suddenly into giving you what you want.

This has been the theme of nearly two seasons but it's worth a little look now, from a sweet spot atop the Championship, because the YEP's Graham Smyth prodded Farke into giving one of his most detailed accounts of his style in the build-up to the Sunderland game. It begins with what it is one of the ultimate problems of football: "You don't know before you start the attack if the outcome is really (that you will) score a goal," said Farke. And if you attack thinking you will score, and you're wrong, the risk is that failure will lead immediately to conceding on the counter. It might help to think of this like the Tufty Club, and Daniel Farke as a road safety conscious squirrel, telling you to look both ways and be sure it's safe before crossing the halfway line.

Solving this is about decision making, patience and teamwork. "We work (so) that we always start our attacks once we have the perfect structure," said Farke, "and if we realise, okay, it's not the perfect structure, then we have to prepare till we are in the structure (so) that we can attack with a quick pass or perhaps even a quick counterattack."

The structural problem, when Ampadu was looking for a way to use Gruev to start an attack against Sunderland, was the six red-and-white shirts in the Leeds United half. And, given the sort of night Gruev was having, the risk of attacking while they were there. The players, Farke said, have to "keep in mind the feeling for the whole game". If Gruev had lost possession trying a quick forward pass, it would have been Wilson Isidor versus Ao Tanaka for the chance to go one-on-one with Meslier. I don't have to tell you why this would have been bad. The structural solution, when Leeds did start attacking, came after those passes back and forth from Ampadu to Meslier and Gruev gradually moved all twenty outfielders into Sunderland's half, with only two red-and-white strikers in threatening positions now surrounded and cut off by Ampadu, Gruev, Rodon, Jayden Bogle and Tanaka. From there, with help from a forward run by Bogle creating space, the ball went Bogle - Piroe - James - Piroe shot. And when Sunderland got the ball they had no way out, Gruev stopping them before they even got to halfway.

I've written before that every one of those square passes Leeds play at the back is just a forward pass that hasn't happened yet, but it's useful to think of them too as like last-ditch tackles that we never need. It's the defending-while-attacking that people who hated Marcelo Bielsa's man-to-man marking wanted by the end, because instead of a team of super-fit players sprinting to lock on their man when the ball is lost, it's a zonal structure already in place in case the ball comes back. Which helps the players, because they don't have to run as far and as hard and the lack of injuries in Farke's squad — touch wood — in a 46 game season feels like a consequence of that. But it's less exciting to watch, simply because the players are doing less running about. Farke's team won't draw attention for sprinting back as one to stop a Wigan Athletic counter-attack. But that's because the thought of a Wigan Athletic counter-attack makes Joe Rodon physically sick.

Rodon was one of the interesting aspects of what Farke was explaining, when Smyth asked if he was influential in communicating Farke's ideas to newer players. What Farke has, within his structure, is tension that feels traditional to the truism that defenders love defending and strikers love to score. "I'm just not sure if the example with Joe Rodon is perfect because he always calms the game down, he's a defender," said Farke. "He always wants to take no risk, and he wants to make sure that we are not offering mistakes. He has to defend the next counterattack. If it's just about the defenders, they would never start a quick attack. They would always calm the game down. And the other way around for offensive players."