The #LUFC Breakfast Debate (Monday 24th November)

Good Morning. It's Monday 24th November, and here are the latest headlines from Elland Road

49ers actively interviewing managerial candidates

The storm clouds are gathering over Elland Road, and Daniel Farke finds himself right in the eye of it. The 2-1 loss to Villa has not only dragged Leeds into the Premier League’s bottom three for the first time this campaign, but nudged them below the ‘point per game’ threshold, a statistical red flag as far as 49ers Enterprises are concerned.

Behind the scenes, 49ers Enterprises are already deep into the recruitment process of lining up a suitable replacement. A leaked “2025 Investment Summary pitch” that went out to new potential investors, recently made its way to the New York Times, where former BBC football reporter Matt Slater exposed all.

Within the fifty slides (of Marathe) presentation , Slater revealed that the 49ers periodically speak with potential suitors as part of their structured recruitment process, even when they already have a manager in place. Paraphrasing "The average Premier League manager’s tenure is 18 months, and therefore contingencies are in place for periodic new hires”.

In truth, it’s a bit of corporate genius; the ability to speak with potential managerial candidates even when the job isn’t technically vacant gives them both flexibility and plausible reasoning if they get caught speaking to a would-be successor. Can Daniel Farke survive the week; the next 48 hours will be crucial!

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That sinking feeling is back

Aston Villa produced a spirited second-half comeback to claim a 2-1 victory over Leeds United at Elland Road on Sunday lunchtime, with Morgan Rogers the hero for the Villains. Leeds struck early in chaotic fashion just eight minutes in, when a Sean Longstaff free-kick was nodded back across goal by Gabriel Gudmundsson. Villa keeper Emi Martinez found himself beaten in the air by Anton Stach, whose header was cleared off the line only to deflect in off Lukas Nmecha. The goal stood after a lengthy VAR check, giving Leeds a slice of fortune they’ve often lacked this season. Buoyed by the early breakthrough, Leeds showed grit and determination, holding their own against a technically superior Villa side. Yet their defensive frailties at one end and lack of cutting edge at the other remain an obvious concern.

The visitors needed a spark after the break and manager Unai Emery found one through his half-time team talk. Just two minutes into the second half, substitute Donyell Malen delivered a sharp low cross that Rogers cleverly flicked past Illan Meslier to level the score. Villa’s momentum grew, and with 15 minutes remaining, Rogers struck again; this time with a free-kick from the edge of the box that kept Lukas Perri rooted to the spot. The hosts thought they’d equalised almost immediately, but VAR intervened once more, ruling out Dan James' effort as Dominic Calvert-Lewin handled the ball on its way in.

For Leeds, the defeat was a painful one, dragging them into the drop zone and increasing the pressure on under-fire boss Daniel Farke. A third consecutive loss, their seventh of the season will have supporters worried, and the questions around Farke’s future are becoming louder.

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Odds tumble on Whites relegation

That sinking feeling is becoming all too familiar for the Elland Road faithful. Aston Villa came from behind to inflict more misery on Daniel Farke’s side at the weekend, the consequences were all too predictable! The 7th defeat of the season saw the Whites slump into the relegation zone for the very first time this campaign, setting the alarm bells ringing louder than ever. It’s not just the fans who are worried; the cold, hard numbers from the bookmakers paint an even bleaker picture.

Leading bookmaker Bet365 has dramatically slashed Leeds United's survival odds, now positioning them as one of the clear favourites for the drop. With odds of 5/4, they sit as the third-most likely team to face relegation, behind only the seemingly doomed Wolves (1/14) and a struggling Burnley (1/4). To put that into perspective, they are now considered a greater relegation risk than West Ham (11/8) and are seen as significantly more vulnerable than fellow strugglers like Nottingham Forest (5/1) and Fulham (6/1).

For Daniel Farke, he is literally a dead man walking. It will be miraculous if he can survive the next 48 hours. A glance at the upcoming fixture list for the remainder of 2025 offers little in the way of an escape route! Trips to title-chasers Manchester City and Liverpool, with a home tie with Chelsea in-between is likely
to extend losing losing run to six consecutive games.

After that, they face a tough visit to Brentford, a must-win home tie against Crystal Palace, and a final away day at the Stadium of Light. Looking at that schedule, it’s genuinely difficult to pinpoint where the next points are coming from. The combination of poor form, a perilous league position, and a horror-show of a run-in has created a perfect storm, and it will take a monumental turnaround to steer the ship away from the Championship trap door.

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Substitutions..... bizarre
Timing....... clockwork regularity 70+
Recruitment...... unfailingly weak.
Is perri actually 18million better than darlow?
Justin,bornauw, may as well be cardboard cut outs...
DCL/nmecha wouldn't frighten a championship defence
Bijol, another high hoper not cutting the mustard.
Stach fallen away big time after a bright start!
Longstaff a worker nothing more
Okafor a few glimpses of talent who may decide he's not up for a long slog of hard battles and get a toothache
Farke deserved his chance of another pop at the premier league and I think he's on very thin ice now, if we capitulate at citeh then he's surely gone through into the water
49ers it's your call.

 

Good morning everyone

What worries me more, almost as much as our drop in form, after a promising start, is the turnaround in performances from West Ham and Forest, who both took the radical steps of sacking their managers, for which most people thought was madness at the time. But look at them both now, neither look like relegation fodder as they did before, same personnel but with different coaches with different ideas, all this seems very familiar to our situation, but their boards took action before it was to late.
I am afraid I agree with the Farke out side, as were heading in one direction only and that’s down, Sadly Farkes record in these situations is as poor as you can get, so c’mon board, hunt Steve Cooper down before it’s all to late.

 

Sack the proof reader!

 

Morning all

Farke is out of his depth at this level, my only fear is we employ someone equally as bad.

 

I hope they are not waiting for a defeat at Man City to sack him. If that's the plan, may as well do it now so a new guy has time to come in and get ready for Chelsea and Liverpool at home.

 

My view is he should have been replaced in the summer with a very good if not top name. My worry now is attracting that type of coach and not going for Gracia type of gamble. If we want to stay in the prem it has to be a recognised coach who is here for the long term. He will know what he has in the squad and will be guaranteed new bodies in the January window even if they are loans.

I watched the Sheffield derby to look at Cooper and Bamford who both came off the bench. Coops still looks like he has it and he even elbowed Bamford in the head and got away with it. Paddy missed his customary sitter but was on the winning team. Maybe we should have given Coops another year as hes no worse than what we have

 

With Coops his biggest asset was his leadership and I feel like we’ve lost that. We don’t really have any leaders. Maybe Longstaff? No one else gets everyone going when the chips are down.

 

Sack those in charge of sackings.

 

TBF, it was a Meslier type performance. The wall could have done better. There's a clue for the players in that the job of the guy lying down is to allow the wall to jump. Only Strujik actually did.

 

Has Farke been sacked yet?

 

I say again, our players are good enough, they are struggling in a system that doesn't utilise their strengths ... Forest looked doomed under Ange but look at the difference now ... a manager makes the decisions on how the team is set up, and the Forest chalk and cheese performances proves this ... we saw first hand how Bielsa transformed a struggling team overnight, bringing a confident mindset and attacking approach ... Farke is killing our players

Sunderland are not better than us, they just play with a better attitude ... Le Bris has decided that being cautious and waiting for the inevitable was not going to work, so he's gone for attacking and trying to win every game ... a 7-0 hiding doesn't scare Sunderland, because they know that they will be okay if they keep on attacking every game

If Leeds go and attack attack attack then results will be a lot better ... it's the fear of failure approach that's undermining the players and the club

Farke also constantly low balling everything, making it sound like he has an impossible task to keep Leeds up is the real issue

He has openly said that a newly promoted team is expected to be relegated, and it's a very difficult thing to accomplish a good mid table finish in your first season... erm, except Sunderland are pooing all over that logic ... if your message constantly is "difficult" and "impossible" then don't be surprised if your players aren't mentally focused to go and win games

You can't tell your players and the world that your target is 9 wins ... that is very defeatist, and you're basically telling your squad that they're not good enough for mid table ... to also set the bar at 38 points is mindless, because the way this season is going, 38 points probably won't be enough ... Farke is not good enough to manage in the Prem, and he's destroying himself with his pig headedness ... he will be sacked, and he will become another Hecky or Wilder, floating around the Championship in a daze

Imagine if Farke said, "Our goal is to get to 38 points as quickly as possible" or "We want to get to 9 wins very quickly and then build on that" ... now that would be the positive message to lift the players, but then he'd have to play more attacking football and set his team up to get players into the box quickly ... he seems incapable of doing this in the Prem

 

Just arrived through the letterbox


Dan got a lot of help yesterday

 

Afternoon all,

It's clear now what so many of us said in the summer that Farke is out of his depth.

Yesterday we played a team that are in Europe and now sit 4th. But we didn't look that far behind them mostly.

The difference is that a top coach worked out what was going wrong and changed things when he needed to.

Our clown couldn't see that our players were tiring and once again, predictably, waited until the 70th minute to make changes.

There is a a half decent team in our squad if we had a competent at this level coach to be in charge.

Farke is not the man.

 

Farke could have gone in the summer with everyones well wishes and would have always been a hero and well received at the club. Now we all just want to see the back of him.

 

Whatever can be said today will have been said a hundred times before over the last few weeks.

 

Oh no it's Monday?

 

I believe so

 

With regard Farke stating too many goals coming down our left hand side, then he needs to look at Okafor more than Gudmundsson, he doesn't cover enough, gives the ball away far too often, doesn't take his man on enough. There's a talent there but not sure he has the brain or desire to match it.