Here are our four talking points from Leeds United’s 2-0 loss to Manchester United at Oslo’s Ullevaal Stadion in a pre-season friendly as two opposition youngsters deliver second-half goals.
Eight days of a fifth manager in 2023
Analysis of pre-season friendlies always comes with the usual caveats. It’s summer, players are not fit, tired from training, disjointed tactically, lacking competitive motivation, often in front of lacklustre crowds and against opponents with all of the same issues.
Leeds United are in an especially difficult-to-read spot at the moment, though. Wednesday’s 2-0 defeat to Manchester United was only Daniel Farke’s eighth day on the job and, as he made the point himself post-match, this is the fifth different voice these players are listening to in a fraction over five months.
Cardiff City await in their opening game of the Championship season just 25 days on from the Oslo defeat and the overriding thought coming away from the game was how much work there is to get through for Farke. Nobody could have realistically expected the German to have this team singing after eight days at the helm, but his own concerns about the quantity of work ahead cannot have been eased either.
This was the pre-season muddle many of us expected it to be. Eight of Farke’s starters had 22 or fewer Leeds appearances to their name and very little time together on the field as a cohesive unit.
This is a team which needs transfers in and out as well as a heap of tactical work before Farke can feel confident about where it is at..
Poveda turns heads
Ian Poveda has not started a competitive fixture for the Whites since the FA Cup defeat to Crawley Town in January 2021. It is fair to say the 23-year-old’s time at Elland Road has not worked out up to now.
With one year left on his contract, the expectation had been Poveda would see out the coming campaign in the same fashion as so many of his team-mates: further afield. After failing to turn the tide under Marcelo Bielsa, even time spent training with Jesse Marsch was not enough to alter his Leeds narrative.
Why would someone already so used to playing away from Leeds suddenly find themselves back in the fold when so many others are leaving? Farke has said there is a clean slate for everyone on the books and no doors will be prematurely closed on anyone.
All the former Manchester City winger can do is impress with every opportunity Farke gives him. Now, one half in a summer friendly is hardly enough to rewrite the Poveda script, but it’s something of a start.
