Phil Hay shares what Daniel Farke is weighing up ahead of Leeds United v West Brom
Daniel Farke is weighing up whether to tinker with his Leeds United lineup for Friday’s (29 December) trip to West Brom, according to Phil Hay.
The German has proven reticent to make changes for changes sake but will be forced into at least one alteration with Illan Meslier suspended following his needless red card in the 2-1 defeat to Preston on Boxing Day (26 December).
The Athletic reporter Hay thinks Farke may have got it wrong by not freshening up the team for the fixture at Deepdale and that changes will enter his thinking for the trip to The Hawthorns.
“Farke is not given to tinkering with his line-up anyway and as the dust settled on Leeds’ defeat at Deepdale, a result which undid the joyous work in their 4-0 rout of promotion rivals Ipswich Town on Saturday, there was a suspicion of him erring on the wrong side of changing much or mixing things up,” Hay wrote for the Athletic (27 December).
“Farke is weighing up changes for West Bromwich Albion away on Friday now and a switch in goal will be one. Darlow’s impending start, at a ground where a debut error set his Newcastle career in motion eight years ago, would be his first in a league fixture since April, when he was on loan in this division with Hull City.”
Rest some tired legs
The Christmas period is hectic and unrelenting…and that’s just for us mere mortals.
For football managers, it is an extremely stressful period to navigate and in every game you are just hoping that players come through unscathed and ready to go again.
It was a tricky one for Farke at Preston. Just three days prior he had his side batter second-place Ipswich Town 4-0, so if everyone was fit and ready to go again then why would he tinker too much for the Preston fixture?
Of course, the flip side to that is the fact that we are in this busy festive run and that fresh bodies and fresh minds might have been the way to go against Preston.
Indeed, had he done that and Leeds still lost he would have been chastised for making changes, so really it was a lose-lose situation. It does, though, seem the right thing to do to give a few players a rest against West Brom.
In other Leeds United news, Archie Gray is surely one of the players set to miss out versus West Brom after what Farke said.