Leeds United take on Man Utd at Elland Road looking to compound the misery on Michael Carrick's side.
Leeds United’s attack is looking quite poor at the moment. And it’s up to Daniel Farke to find solutions as soon as possible.
Five games have gone by in the Premier League since our demolition of Newcastle United. What promised to be the start of a potentially brilliant run of form has tailed off significantly, with Leeds short of ideas.
Of course, the buck stops with Daniel Farke and how he looks to set this side up. The manager, meanwhile, sees things a bit differently.
Daniel Farke responds to Leeds United attacking criticism with “individual quality” claim
LUFCData and Jonny Cooper both shared damning insights into how bad Leeds’ attack is struggling at the moment in the league.
Cooper relayed LUFCData’s graph about Leeds’ inability to carve out good chances in the final third. He wrote that out of Europe’s top five leagues, Leeds rank 95th out of 96 for final third passing accuracy.
Farke was quizzed on this specific statistic, in which he had a fairly defiant claim about where the problem lies.
“Sign of not being precise or effective, to be able to play the right pass at the right moment,” Farke said, per the YEP. “Doesn’t have to do with processes; this is why we speak about individual quality.
“We can work with players to improve, but it’s a difference if you can buy £100million players; this is why they cost so much. We were unbelievably accurate when we had the best individual quality in the Championship, but now we face sides like Bournemouth who buy players like Rayan, Evanilson, Kluivert. This is the difference, we can’t compete in being tidy, so have to compensate by being tactically spot on, good in physical aspects, and structured against the ball.
“Don’t see this as a criticism, see this as a responsibility to compensate with other topics, then improve individual quality over the next years.”
Daniel Farke’s bullish comments detract from his own Leeds United responsibilities to coach a good attack too
Of course, looking at the two attacks between Leeds and Bournemouth, it’s clear they have better and more valuable options in the final third.
But we’ve scored fewer goals than Hull City. And it’s quite obvious we have better players than them, so it comes down to how both sides are coached. Sergej Jakirovic is getting everything out of his squad at the moment.
I do think there’s some truth to Farke’s belief that we don’t have as good an attack as many teams. But we’ve scored the third-fewest goals in the league. Does Farke therefore think we’ve got the third-worst group of attackers in the division?
That’s simply not the case. We could name a front three of Noah Okafor, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, and Harry Wilson that got a combined 32 goals and nine assists last season. The quality is clearly there, and that’s before you consider the likes of Gabriel Gudmundsson, Jayden Bogle, Jean-Matteo Bahoya, Lukas Nmecha, and Anton Stach. They’re all players who would walk into multiple squads and multiple starting XIs too.
I think it’s very reductive to just say we’ve not got the individual quality to score goals. As Farke says, you have to adapt the squad as a collective to make up for these perceived shortcomings, and that can make up for any lack of quality, as Hull, Ipswich Town, and Coventry City have proven – all three promoted teams have matched or bettered our goal tally so far.
Yes, being organised and hard to beat is a very big tick for Farke. That shouldn’t be taken away from him at all, but he needs to also acknowledge how doing so has sacrificed the attack completely at the moment.
