Joy Division are still a big noise around Leeds. Forty-five years after their mesmerizing performance at the city’s Futurama, their most famous song continues to be twisted to mock Leeds United.
Leicester’s midfielder Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, who had secured promotion, rejoiced “Leeds, Leeds falling apart again” and later that week Ipswich Town fans joined a chorus of uproarious mockery.
Leeds restored a sense of hope heading to Wembley on Sunday with their assertive return to form in the play-off semi-final demolition of Norwich. But before that, the song reminded an older generation of other appropriate excerpts from the back catalog as a soundtrack to the somber atmosphere after the three defeats in April that left them stranded in third place: She has lost control, New dawn fades, Wilderness.
Such deep-seated pessimism was all Daniel Farke had tried to assuage. He was named manager last July when the acquisition by 49ers Enterprises had yet to be finalized. He impressed his interviewers not only with his record of two Championship titles in three years at Norwich, but also with his belief that this was his ultimate, perfect chance to thrive in the Premier League. Farke wanted to build ‘success with sustainability’ and prove that Norwich’s trials at the top level were more a matter of resources than of his ingenuity.
Most of all, the new board admired his certainty and later revealed that it seemed as if he was evaluating them rather than the other way around.
Making changes
New owners should have a clean slate, but 49ers Enterprises has had representation on the board for years and the consortium needed a credible appointment after the farce of the previous two seasons. All the goodwill built up by Marcelo Bielsa’s appointment and his achievement in winning promotion and finishing ninth in the Premier League after 16 years in the Championship and League One was destroyed by a series of overconfident blunders.
Two miserable years of 16 wins and 39 defeats, 16 of them by a margin of three goals or more, had taken the fan base from bewilderment to annoyance to disillusionment and finally disgust.
In addition, many of the players bought in the previous twelve months for the failed Jesse Marsch project had informed the club that they wanted to activate rare clauses in their contracts drawn up under the previous owner that gave them the right to be expelled in the event of relegation loaned instead of sold. . No one cried about the departure of Brenden Aaronson, Rasmus Kristensen, Max Wöber and Marc Roca, or that of previous signings, Robin Koch, Diego Llorente and Jack Harrison, but the loss of expensive assets, duds or not, without compensation other than a saving on wages, it smelled like the economy of the madhouse.
Farke’s legacy over a feverish few weeks for the club ahead of the club’s sale looked meager. During his first press conferences he was optimistic but explicit that the eight weeks before the transfer window closed would be turbulent. Some players had clauses they might want to activate, while others without them might just want to leave. Coherence, he emphasized while asking for patience, would only become visible in the fall.
Leeds’ long absence from the Premier League had meant they missed the imperial stage, the rapid inflation of TV revenues as first Setanta, ESPN and then BT Sports entered the market and forced Sky’s bids to peak . The increase in revenue from overseas rights had also added to a pot from which the demise of Leeds had excluded them for sixteen years. Consequently, unlike most clubs of a similar size, the football club’s structure lacked real depth. A favorite ground was old and dirty and departments were understaffed compared to their rivals.
We need to make it a fun thread for the whole family. Respond with a photo of the sloppiest/most dilapidated part of Elland Road. https://t.co/YbFvMoMIjs
— Michael Normanton (@Michael_TSB) March 12, 2023
Bielsa was truly a miracle worker. Leeds were still essentially a Championship club, but one paying Premier League wages. When Victor Orta, the sporting director since 2017, left in April 2023, apparently in conflict with the appointment of Sam Allardyce for a final throw of the dice with four games remaining, the season ended without first-team coaching. staff and someone are bracing themselves to deal with the explosion of the contractual time bombs.
Cleverly, the new owners sought expert help, bringing in Nick Hammond, former sporting director at Reading and the man who shaped Newcastle’s successful transfer strategy in January 2022 after its sale, as an advisor. Farke, pointedly referred to as ‘manager’ rather than ‘head coach’ like his immediate predecessors, joined the recruitment process and provided the first sign of encouragement in months with the purchase of Ethan Ampadu from Chelsea for £7 million.
He played in midfield in the opening game of the season against Cardiff and was instrumental in the 2–0 comeback to secure a draw, with Crysencio Summerville’s equalizer in the 95th minute. But after the match, two starters in attack, Luis Sinisterra and Wilfried Gnonto, both announced their intention to leave and asked to be released from the first team. Farke dealt with it decisively and banned them from training while their agents lobbied the club.
Ultimately, Sinisterra, who threatened legal action, was forced to move to Bournemouth on loan on deadline day, while Gnonto, without an enforceable clause or a credible offer, was warned and reintegrated after an apology. Both played and scored in a 4–3 win over Ipswich at Portman Road in Leeds’ fourth match, a first league win since April 4, 12 games earlier. Sinisterra’s rancorous departure six days later punctured the relief, but in their forward play Leeds had finally shown they could achieve Farke’s formula for promotion: 26 wins, with 75 goals and a points-per-match ratio of two or more. .
After their unsuccessful start, Leeds started to click in early October, winning nine and drawing one in a run of eleven games, which saw them climb to third place behind Leicester and Ipswich, both of whom they would beat home and away. Playing 4-2-3-1 with the excellent teenager in midfield using Archie Gray mainly as a right-back, Farke’s style was based on control.
Holding the ball was paramount, even if it meant passing the ball over the back four numerous times and then backing the goalkeeper back in, waiting for a mistake in the opposition’s press. The two deeper midfielders played conservatively – in fact none of these positions, whether filled by Gray, Amapadu, Ilia Gruev or Glen Kamara, contributed a goal before Gruev’s free-kick last week – and Leeds relied heavily on the light , fast, skilled wingers. Summerville, Gnonto and Dan James, who shared 40.
When they lost consecutive games against Preston and West Brom after Christmas, they started the year six points behind Southampton, nine behind Ipswich and a Darién Gap of 17 points on leaders Leicester with 21 games to play. Eleven weeks later they topped the league.
Finding the right chemistry
What had changed? After two years of unreliable fitness and erratic form following his England debut, Patrick Bamford was restored to the centre-forward role. Gruev, a tenacious midfielder with a claw on his left foot, stepped up and Ampadu dropped back to centre-half, forming such an enduring partnership with Joe Rodon that they did not concede a goal in open play for thirteen games – of which they had twelve played. won.
Despite all the flaws in his finishing technique, Bamford’s movement and hold-up play made the team more fluid, allowing Georginio Rutter, the most creative talent, to play a deeper role and the wingers and full-backs to find more space. In that run of thirteen games they were often convincing, sometimes merely efficient, but they took on teams confident they would get the job done.
That all changed during the March international break when Gruev was injured and Rutter underwent hernia surgery. Leeds lost three and won just two of their next seven games, leaving Leicester and Ipswich hovering over them. Farke had taken them to the threshold, but at the last minute they were left with the wrong key in the lock.
The reasons for this are numerous. It is an irony not lost on fans that so-called ‘dirty Leeds’ are second in the fair play table with the fewest yellow cards in the division. The number of ‘tactical errors’ they committed is negligible and allowed themselves to be overrun at the end of the season when attacks higher up the pitch could have been stopped.
That naivety extends to their abysmal conversion rate from set pieces – relegated Rotherham have scored a whopping nine – and a general lack of experience. Only four players over the age of 27 have made more than 10 starts. In the words of the fanzine: The square ballLeeds have missed out on a “grey championship b——” and they certainly haven’t had a hall-of-fame veteran from the class of Bobby Collins in 1964, Gordon Strachan in 1990 or Pablo Hernández in 2020 to beat them to the Promised Land.
But the play-offs have given them a chance at redemption, even if supporters travel to Wembley with a sense of dread after three final defeats dating back to 1987.
If they were to pull through against Southampton, who beat them twice this season, it would be the perfect promotion for the zeitgeist. Few want a simple triumph anymore, they want to expose their scars, they want their haters to eat their words, ultimately they want revenge and that’s why Leeds fans sing that song too.
Supporters enjoy it schadenfreude is nothing new. It’s the showiest motif on the game’s tapestry. ‘Leeds are falling apart again’ will be sung on Sunday. The only question is whether it will be a sneer from the Holy One or a cry of ecstatic defiance that would sound like an exorcism.