Leeds United chair Paraag Marathe's every word on Farke, transfers, Elland Road, Rangers and future

Marathe met with journalists for his now annual post-season address and faced questions on recent comments by his manager, how transfer decisions are made, what this summer's transfer window could look like and areas in which the club have to improve. He began the meeting by revealing a new contract for Ethan Ampadu.

PM: In 25 years at the 49ers we were able to break our own news maybe twice or three times, so I will let you guys know officially now that Ethan has signed an extension, and so we've got Ethan Ampadu locked up for four years. I don't know what the embargo status is, but I'm excited to be able to announce our own news. Normally, it's always everything always leaking out via agents or someone else, but it is t's crossed and i's dotted, it's all done.

How important was that to do?

PM: "Ethan was so instrumental for our whole year, and he's just such a captain on and off the pitch. Everything he does is just true leadership. He's sort of almost like one of us on the pitch, but he's also one of the guys. We all thought it was such an important sort of first step for this upcoming window."

How did you find the season?

PM: "Obviously for me, I'm just stressed and anxious at every game. You guys see me pacing all the time. It's not like it's a show, it's my anxiety and my nerves. So to be able to have three games of just joy and bliss… It was such an incredible season for our first season up. Arguably, I think that the stats and the data would tell you that we should have been higher up the table even than we were, but to have a season where it's our first win at Old Trafford since 1981, our first time in the FA Cup semi-finals 1987, it's just like such a rewarding and satisfying year. I feel like everybody at the club deserves so much credit.

"In fact, if you indulge me, I do want to just take a lap of appreciation for a second. With Daniel and Chris [Domogalla, fitness coach] and CJ [Christopher John, assistant coach] and Ed [Wotton, goalkeeper coach] and Edmund [Riemer, assistant coach] - those guys were phenomenal all year. They were steady. They were just unwavering in their confidence, and I love that. Our medical team and our performance team, how incredible - you've seen the stats, just keeping our guys healthy. It's been now a couple of years that we've had players who have injury histories or at least histories of not being available all the time and they kept them available. What a great job they've done.

"Our recruitment team, with Robbie [Evans, managing director] and Adam [Underwood, sporting director] and Alex [Davies, head of recruitment], I'm actually particularly proud of those guys because they took a lot of flack last season for being first-timers… I'm so proud of those guys because they ignored the noise, kept their head down, did their work and so it's just so rewarding. All the departments, [media staff] and our commercial side - everybody I'm just so proud of, and last but not least; you're only as good as the company you keep.

"And our board is a really special group with Andrew Schwartzberg and Gene Schneur and Pete Lowy and Andreas Dracopoulos and with [49ers chief] Jed York and even with Oliver [Mintzlaff] at Red Bull. Everybody's so invested. They're obviously all great business people and we all lean on each other for different points and different advice on different things, but they're also passionate supporters. I mean you've seen them all at various points at matches. It's a really collegial group. And honestly, I'm personally just humbled to be in the company of those guys. We have a really special thing going. And my hope is that we just stay on track and keep it going."

You said in your recent statement about the next two years being strategic and disciplined. Three to five years, what's your long term plan?

PM: "I would say first of all, the lessons learned - they always say the best predictor of the future is the past, right? And I was a part of that last time we were fortunate enough to get promoted and what year one, year two, and ultimately year three look like.

"And there's a lot to learn there - we obviously didn't do a great job in recruitment and in financial structuring and things like that. And so we take those lessons with us now going forward and this is why we need to be very strategic and careful and thoughtful of how we go into this second season.

"Not too excited, not too jubilant thinking we've arrived and not too conservative thinking the world is ending, you know, now we're in another war. But somewhere in between.

"To me it's about establishing Premier League residency and that probably is for that three-year plan if we can establish residency through three years. We're obviously with the stadium redevelopment and everything like that. The next three to five years? Leeds is one of the biggest if not the biggest club city in the UK, right? The support around the country, around the region, in the world, is phenomenal. We sell more kits than many Premier League clubs combined.

"And so I don't want to sound too ambitious or make any statements that are too headline-grabbing, but we should be a really established Premier League side that has an opportunity to compete internationally, they're in that longer-term plan. As we switch to SCR [Squad Cost Ratio, new finance rules this summer], our organic potential, our local potential with stadium expansion and everything like that, I think that puts us squarely in the top eight of Premier League club stadium sizes, and so that should speak for itself."

On the topic of lessons from yesteryear, you were on the board in 2021, so what mistakes that were made then that you'll try to avoid now? Clearly the team fell away in that second season, so what will you learn from that summer?

PM: "We have to do a very thoughtful job in recruitment. I think we were probably a little bit fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants that time where we chase the shiny object of what player might be available and let's go do that, not necessarily thinking about what fits us.

"I think everything that we do, everything we did this past summer was I guess a three part exercise in recruitment. One is... what fits our system and what Daniel wants in terms of how we want to play?

"Second is; what do we think, what do we take based on our own research and data? What do you think it takes to survive in terms? The mix of players in the squad. As you saw we went for size and physicality and probably a little more experience. That was very much by design because we thought that's what it takes us to survive. And then last is like, who fits within Leeds? One, our salary structure and our wage structure and who we can afford, but also, I think a really critical thing is love those who love you back. Chase the players that want to be Leeds.

"I saw Dom's [Dominic Calvert-Lewin] response to a tweet when he signed and some smart ass comment about like ‘you had nowhere else, and that's why you ended up at Leeds’, and he said, ‘actually, I had Champions League options, I chose Leeds, MOT’. I love that.

"And the reason I say that is because if you don't have players and people who want to be a part of Leeds and know what it means, then when things get tough, they might check out a little bit. And in some of those, both in the second and third seasons, you probably saw it yourselves - there were some guys who maybe were thinking about where they're going to be next as early as March. I don't think you saw that at all this season. November, December, even January were tough for us in terms of where we sat at the table, but I thought you saw real resolve among the group and testament to Ethan [Ampadu] for really keeping those guys on the steady."

How did Daniel's comments about ambition in that press conference land with you?

PM: "I'm not bothered by it. I love his ambition. I have ambition too, I think it was probably for him - and I'm happy for him - probably a moment to just [let out a ] sigh, it was relaxation for a minute. We've arrived, and he doesn't have to constantly be answering questions about, 'are we going to survive or not?' I will say this, though. I talk to Daniel all the time. We are on the same page. We always have been.

"Daniel doesn't need to pitch me on the next three year plan, and by the same token, I don't need to pitch him on what the three year plan is going to be like. Leeds is bigger than him, and Leeds is bigger than me, it's bigger than all of us. What we have done that I'm proud of, and that we all should be proud of, is we got Leeds on a track going in the right direction at the right speed. And we're on the train right now, I'm on the train, Daniel's on the train, we're all on the train. I'm excited about him coaching the squad, and hopefully we'll be doing it much longer than this season as well. But it isn't about one selling the other on ambition, we already have ambition, and Leeds has ambition, and what, what we've done is we've got it on the track that we just got to keep it going."

You mentioned there about potentially coaching this season, and perhaps longer. Have contract discussions been held with Daniel at all, he has 12 months on his deal I appreciate that but is it a subject that's been broached yet?

PM: "So my hope and expectation is that he's with us for a while. He's got another 12 months, but I think we both have an interest in keeping this going. So at the right time and in the right way, we'll have those conversations, and yeah, he's a big part of our future."

One of the big aspects of what he was talking about was control. He runs the football department, and he has the final say, and the impression we've had is that maybe when he first came in as a manager, not a head coach, control was important to him. Maybe that that shifted a little bit last summer, and it sounds like he was setting a stall out for reasserting some control, bringing some power back to himself. Do you think he's got too much power, or wants too much power, or are you happy with giving him all of the control that he wants?

PM: "I think that's maybe a little bit of a misnomer, because I don't think any power changed over the three years. He is a very, very important part of what we do in the football side, and it always has been that way. Instead of saying who has the power to say 'yes I'm going to go sign this player, go get this player,' I think the better way to say it is actually upside down, is who has the right to say 'no, this person doesn't fit.'

"And that is all of us. Everybody's in this together, we are not going to sign a player that Daniel doesn't want or that doesn't fit his system. Period. He has all the power in that sense. We're also not going to sign a player that costs £500 million, because it just doesn't work, so maybe in that sense I have the power. We're not going to sign a player that doesn't fit whatever contract structure. In that sense Adam [Underwood, director of football] and Robbie [managing director] have the power. It's actually really rewarding.

"The group works really well together but everything is always run by him first and last in terms of 'does this player fit?' and could we do this or this compromise or that sacrifice or trade off. So I don't think it was necessarily about reasserting power. I think it was just let's make sure that we keep it in the same system."

Did you feel it was odd that he felt the need to mention that?

PM: "I didn't. I didn't. That didn't stand out to me in particular. I think it's just more, keep this going as we've had it. Okay, maybe it was more, I'm now just thinking out loud, but it was more just like, hey, we have a really good thing going, let's not mess that up now, just because we've made it to the Prem and stayed up a year, let's not all of a sudden go do this and this and this, let's make sure we do this properly."

Can you spend as freely as you did last summer, this summer, under the new rules?

PM: "I think we're going to be pretty strategic about how we spend. I don't want to make any blanket statements, because competitively, I don't want to hurt us in the market, but we know we have to improve the squad. There's going to be ins, there's going to be a few outs, obviously. PSR, SCR changes things a little bit in the short term. In the short term, actually, PSR for us pre-stadium redevelopment, we have a little less flexibility with SCR than we would have had with PSR, but we still have room to do what we need to do, so I would just say we'll be strategic about it and we know we have to improve the squad."

Daniel was saying this at the end of the season, 'we want to keep the core of the squad that we've built.' Is there any scenario at all, where you feel you can accept if an offer comes in, an offer for your one of your key players? Is that a scenario that can happen?

PM: "YI agree with him. It is important to keep the core together, the core of any team as they spend more time and gel together and coalesce together, it just creates where the sum of the parts are greater than the individual pieces.

"I don't want to say everybody is off limits, because what if someone in came with £500 million for somebody? But there is no intent for our core group to move on from them, because they had career seasons. In fact, take Ethan for example, it was never a contemplation for us for a New York second that we were going to do anything other than try to extend him and keep him here for a long time."

And in terms of incomings as well, obviously last last summer was very, very busy with a lot of players coming in. What will this summer look like in terms of transfers? Is it targeting higher quality individual talent?

PM: "Well, only because the bar has been raised, right? Last season, we were a newly-promoted side, a Championship club that had to basically build on the fly. So now it's a higher bar. And so just by the nature of that, I think there'll be fewer [but] that are more high quality, just because to get into our squad and to get onto the pitch is a much higher bar than it was 12 months ago. So we're looking to sprinkle in some additions that really help us. And at the same time, there'll be some outs."

What did you learn from that episode in November, where the results were a little bit shaky? There was a bit of pressure building on Daniel and the team. What did you learn from the patience that was shown at that point and how that was then paid off?

PM: "Well, it was a stressful time, that's for sure. You know, there's a lot of pressure on everybody, but obviously the most pressure is on the manager. [I was] just really taking in feedback from everybody and having conversations.

"I think the most important thing is internally, inside our building, to make sure that we're all on the same page and having really open, honest, transparent conversations.

"We set out at the beginning of the season with a plan. We recruited to that plan in terms of what we thought it takes to survive and how we want to play and we all signed off on that plan. We all agreed on it. And then we all sort of went forward and in any season in any match you don't know which way the ball is going to bounce, you don't know if your day is going to end in joy or in agony right? But you know if you just look at over a long period of time if you're doing it the way that you're supposed to be doing then over the long period it will average out. And like I said, in the end, we probably should have finished a little bit higher than we actually did."

You showed you can recruit last summer for the Premier League. Does the club need to get better at selling? And trying to shift on some of the players that had to go out on loan or maybe are surplus to requirements?

PM: "I mean, there's no doubt that it will benefit us to have sales. I don't know if it's necessarily that the club needs to do a better job of selling. First of all, there are three parties in any sale. It's not just us, it's another club willing and wanting a said player, and it's also a player wanting and willing to go. And that's a function of: are they getting onto the pitch with us, are they playing, are they productive? And if they're not, then it's even harder. To answer your question, no doubt, to stay financially sustainable, you've got to have your ins and your outs. And going forward, we probably do need to manage our outs."

Could you explain how SCR will impact the club this summer compared to PSR?

PM: "So this summer, you won't see much difference. Like I said, it's almost even a little bit trickier. But as the stadium goes through, SCR benefits those that do have really strong local bases, whether it's by virtue of a good-sized stadium that sells out, selling your kits, having good commercial opportunities, everything that you could do organically as a club.

"And so it does benefit the clubs that can create their own revenue. And obviously, we have that potential, and we will have that potential as we do the stadium expansion. And so in time, we will be able to transition to that more than upper echelon clubs to be able to do that."

Since we spoke to you last time, you've stepped down as Vice-Chairman of Rangers. So can you explain your current situation?

PM: "Yeah, so same involvement. very involved and very interested and very passionate about it. Also, there were the MCO [multi-club ownership] rules that prevented official board status for the moment - that could change back, but very much still involved.

Is that an avenue that you can explore more as a club, thinking in terms of player movement that Rangers make?

PM: "Yeah, definitely, because we can maybe help influence the player's opportunity and ability to play, make sure we know the system fits, make sure we know the medical and performance side is good for him, the coach. Because we have more knowledge as opposed to sending a player off and not knowing how it's going to be.

"But ultimately, it also takes three; the player has to want to go. We're not forcing just because we're part of both clubs and operating both clubs, we’re not forcing the other club to take them. So they also have to want it. There were one or two opportunities last season that would've made sense. But you know in the end the player didn't want to go. But there would have been an opportunity there could have been an opportunity and hopefully or maybe there is one in the future, too."

Last summer there was the term stretch targets - aiming for players who you thought would make the difference, so to speak, like Igor Paixao. Is that still the same ambition of this summer, to try and get that next-level player?

PM: "Yeah, I think so. Just because, like I said before, the bar has been raised, right? I don't think we just wanna bring in squad players that are gonna come on in the 85th minute. I think if we're going to do it, we want to bring players that can make a real impact. And just take Paixao in the winger position. You've got Noah Okafor, you've got Brenden Aaronson, you got Daniel James. Willy Gnonto and Largie Ramazani. We've got some really talented players, even Lucas Nmecha played outside sometimes too, so we've the bar to get into the squad and get minutes is pretty high. So just by that, it's going to mean we're going to take, maybe there's going to be a few moonshots here and there to get some really high creative differential players."

The big story for last season was the system change to the three centre backs. Are you tempted to change that now or do you want to stick with it because you know it works?

PM: "I don't want to be that person or that chairman who jumps into talking about what formation we should play. That's what we have our football experts for. So I leave that up to Daniel and his staff with Adam and Robbie and everyone to figure out what.

"There's an exercise happening right now in terms of what we think it takes to survive the second season. And it is different from what we think it takes to survive that first season out. So will there be tweaks to it? I'm sure there will be, but I'm certainly not going to sit here as if I am the expert and say we have to play with this formation or that formation. I just know I want to keep winning like that and that's why we have Daniel and his staff to go and figure that out."

What about growing the organisation? A lot of big Premier League clubs, their headcount is absolutely enormous in terms of all their different departments. Is that something that has to happen progressively?

PM: "Yeah, probably as we go over time. One thing that I've been so impressed with [the staff] - there's no hours in a day that stops anyone at the club. It's amazing. Everybody is just so passionate about Leeds United. It's almost like everyone grew up in Leeds or something because it's like something in the water.

"Because yeah, we are a smaller club in terms of staff size relative to the established Premier League clubs. But also, personally, I sort of like that underdog mentality. My whole life, my whole career, I've sort of operated with a chip on my shoulder.

"For better or for worse, I am motivated by proving myself right and proving others wrong. And I feel like that's a little bit of the club mentality too. And so, I almost want to give people the opportunity to continue to grow as well. I mean, Jordan [Owens, head of comms] stepped into his role via promotion. Scott Hobro [head of digital, content and marketing] stepped into his role via promotion. Adam [Underwood, director of football] stepped into his role via promotion. Robbie [Evans, managing director] stepped into his role via promotion. Henry [McStay, head of medical] stepped in his role via promotion. And there's something special about that. And it's something personally satisfying, rewarding for them as well. But I don't want to stop I don't want to stop that empowerment that's already naturally within the club.

On the stadium expansion, what can fans expect to see around Elland Road, especially those in the West End, as we enter the next season and beyond?

PM: "No doubt there'll be some disruptions here and there. The ticket office is gone. I know where we are up in the chairman's area, there's going to be some disruptions as well. I think that it's all by design because we're trying not to compromise or sacrifice seats during games during the season.

"It's all being done over a sort of a longer period of time so that we keep as many fans in their seats during matches. So there will be disruptions and probably some annoyances and hopefully everybody can just bear with us as we get through."

What's your approach to the academy? What is your approach looking forward to the under-21s or the under-18s?

PM: "I talked to Daniel about this just the other day, and I talk to Robbie and Adam about it all the time, but for a club like us, there's no doubt that for us to be competitive and sustainable, we've got to be able to churn out young players.

"Whether it's through the academy or finding them somewhere else and signing them and developing them. I don't want to praise individual certain other clubs, but there are clubs that have done a great job of staying sustainable and very competitive by doing just that.

"And we're not in the category where we can just throw and splash money around, and if we splash money at one player, if it doesn't work out, don't worry, just splash money again at the same position. We don't have the luxury of being able to miss like that. And so we have to be really good at developing young players. And you know the recent history, we haven't had those jumps of players [come through].

"But you've got young Harry Gray that's chomping at the bit to come in. You've got other guys. You've got Jayden [Lienou]. So we've got young players, but no doubt we need more and we need to develop them. And developing them means they've got to play, too. They've got to get minutes."