Daniel Farke, emotions, and the way promotion was won
Leeds fans are, as Farke says, emotional. It doesn't matter how it makes the manager feel, as Howard Wilkinson once said, but it mattered that the team saw their manager using fans' emotions as fuel for his own calm. Since Chris Wilder called his club's fans a 'disgrace', Leeds have won every game.
The thing about the guys managing your football team is that you don't have to like them. Often fans don't. Howard Wilkinson was smart enough to realise this. He is revered now as one of only two managers to win major trophies and take Leeds United into Europe, but coming up from Division Two in 1989/90, he couldn't have been more different to, and more distant from, the average Leeds United supporter. He was from Sheffield, for one thing.
For other things, he was teacher-like, stentorian, severe, somewhat boring. The 'Sergeant Wilko' nickname was not always fond. He used to read his programme notes aloud to have them broadcast over the PA before games, like lectures. And he intended to lecture. It was a sensitive time in football history, after the Hillsborough disaster, and in Leeds United's history, as Wilkinson and chairman Leslie Silver had realised that success on the pitch wouldn't be enough on its own. The club had to change, and that meant a new look stadium and newly well-behaved fans, so part of Wilko's mission was getting the fans to understand that having the football team they wanted would mean leaving their hooligan days behind. So here he was, this dour south Yorkshireman fossil — he was 47 years old — lecturing United's support on good behaviour and morality. He was hard to relate to, hard to like. And, he knew it. That's part of why he bought Vinnie Jones, because then the fans could like Vinnie instead. And then Vinnie could deliver all the same messages as Wilko but in a way the fans would understand.
Even if the fans didn't understand Wilkinson, or appreciate him until years later, he understood them and understood they might not understand, appreciate or like him. And that they didn't have to. The chapter in my book 100 Years of Leeds United that deals with the post-title years is called, 'It doesn't matter how it makes me feel', which is what Wilkinson said about the abuse coming his way after losing the League Cup final in 1996. "I have to take the responsibility whether things have gone well or not so well," he said. His job was to be as good at managing Leeds United as he could be, not to be the fans' friend.
This is not Leeds United's first promotion...
Relive the glories of 2020 and 1990 — and 1964, 1956, 1932, 1928 and 1924, too.
I've seen something of this in the way Daniel Farke has managed Leeds United over the last two years. A lot of fans don't like him. But, by and large, that's okay. That's not what the manager is there for. The manager can't do a Larry Nance Jr, sticking retro tops on his back and money behind the bar for fans, taking part in sing-a-longs and parties. Well, Sheffield United's manager can, but we'll come back to him. The manager can't score goals and do somersaults. The manager can't catch the crosses his 'keeper doesn't, finish the chances his striker can't. Apart from a brief flurry around Christmas, it took until the last home game of the season, after promotion was assured, to hear Daniel Farke's name being sung with any gusto. This, though, has been okay. He's had his post-match lap of cheers after most games and that has been enough.
It's not, in the end, about how it makes Daniel Farke feel. But it is, throughout, about how it makes the players feel, feel about playing at Elland Road and in front of United's travelling fans in whatever mood they're having. Farke is a man who says a lot in press conferences but from a limited, second-language lexicon, so along with 'coffee and cake on the sofa' we've been used to hearing about Leeds United fans being 'emotional'.
"Everyone cares so much about this club and everyone is so crazy, passionate and emotional about this club," he said in September. "I don't have to manage the fans," he said in October, "Our supporters are experienced. They know that it's difficult. They are just so emotional and want us to win each of our home games. This is the expectation that comes along once you work for Leeds United." In December he said, "I don't feel at all criticised or under pressure. I know exactly what we're doing. I knew when I signed the contract what an emotional club Leeds United is." In January, "it's never possible to lead a massive and emotional club like Leeds United in panic mode."
A lot of Leeds United fans haven't liked this. Few Leeds United fans, however, can deny it. This month we'll be celebrating winning the European Cup fifty years ago, and it's a rare fanbase who can turn such anger into such consistent imaginary that, when we sing we're the Champions of Europe, we believe it. It's a powerful motivator of loyalty among Leeds fans for their club. But it's not always so helpful, or easy to explain the absence of the actual European Cup from the cabinet, to the players. Which is what Farke came around to when he talked about Leeds being an emotional club in April, after beating Middlesbrough, when post-match emotions got the better of Ao Tanaka.
"Sometimes we forget we don't work with robots. We work with human beings. We have all these mental health awareness days, but when it comes down to the wire and everyone is emotional, then we don't think about mental health anymore. Then we think about, okay, the frustration has to go (be heard). It's so, so difficult. And we all know how emotional this club and the outside world is. But I tell you what, within this dressing room, we have such a belief and such a togetherness and such a spirit and such a trust."