Leeds United and Daniel Farke given survival brief by 300-game veteran with new trio prediction
Leeds United boss Daniel Farke was responsible for 'outstanding football' last season but he will have to embrace adaptability to survive next season according to a 300-game Premier League veteran boss.
Tony Pulis is full of compliments for how the Whites performed en route to their Championship title last season and he's a fan of Farke. The pair did battle four times during Farke's spell as Norwich City manager, with the German coming out on top on each occasion in a quartet of tight games, all decided by the merit of a single goal. Speaking in 2020 Farke revealed how much he valued his meetings with Pulis, saying before a Norwich and Sheffield Wednesday clash: "I'm really looking forward to meeting Tony Pulis again. It is always a pleasure to meet him. He has so much experience and knowledge about the game.He behaves himself with great dignity and pride. It is always great to have a chat with him. He is such an educated person and the fire is still burning and you can see that on the touchline. It is always unbelievably difficult to play against his sides. He knows exactly what is important to stay absolutely solid and be compact."
Though Pulis may be regarded as more of a pragmatist in his style, he enjoyed the football that Farke had Leeds playing last season and he hopes to see his old foe find success in the top flight. Pulis believes that for Leeds to achieve survival it will take summer additions and a willingness on Farke's behalf to be fluid with the team's gameplan.
"Leeds were outstanding last season, some of the football they played was just unbelievable," Pulis told BoyleSports. "Daniel Farke is a good football man and he's a nice man. You would hope and pray that he does work it out for him. I'm not going to sit here and tell him what he should be doing and what he shouldn't be doing. He'll have his own views and his own values in respect of running a football club and running the team.
“Obviously the money that they spend now in this close season, if they can get some good players to add to the squad that they've got, then you would hope that they would have enough. But as I've said before, I don't think you can go into the Premier League taking teams on in a certain way. I think you have to be smart in the way you play. The coach has to find a way to win football matches and be adaptable. He has to be adaptable in his approach to coaching and preparing the team for different games, both home and away."
Farke has already admitted that a tweak to Leeds United's mindset will be necessary in the top flight, after setting out to dominate with attacking football in the Championship.
"You have your feelings and your thoughts about football anyway and it develops and hopefully it improves,” he said. “It has to evolve and develop because you always try to be ahead of the wave. I always try to improve little things but keeping in mind it is a project which needs to win many games and score many goals to win promotion.
"It's quite often the base that you need to score many goals because you need to win many games. We had two flying full-backs and it's no coincidence our full-backs have chipped in with many goals and assists. Our ‘rest defending’ of how we want to control the counters was a bit more risky than what we will do at Premier League level. I was not thinking I wanted to stop the opponents' counter-attacks like I would do in the Premier League where there is even better individual quality and more pace and more strength. I wanted to do it in a way that was successful in the Championship. The experience of what you can do at times in the Championship has helped me more than thinking too much about next season."
Pulis' prediction is that of the three Premier League new boys, Leeds will stand a better chance of bucking the recent trend of immediate Championship returns for promoted sides.
"I’d say that Leeds have the best chance of staying up, then Burnley and then Sunderland," he said. "When we went up with Stoke, we were written off after one game. We were told that we were going to go straight back down, but we were smart about it. The manager, director of football, the chairman, they have to work out a system and they can get the reward of staying in that league and getting the enormous financial benefits."