Elland Road let Daniel Farke know where he stood on Sunday afternoon. For the first time this season, Leeds United will finish a Premier League weekend in the relegation zone and behind the one-point-per-game ratio they are targeting for survival.
Manchester City, Chelsea and Liverpool await within the next fortnight. The walls are slowly closing in and, for the first time since he arrived, it feels like there are justifiable question marks against the manager’s future.
The club’s ownership certainly came to a crossroads with Farke at the end of their two Championship seasons with him in charge, but after a 90 and then 100-point haul, including a league title, it always felt harsh, or unnecessarily risky, to roll the dice with another candidate. This feels different now.
For one, the jeopardy is far greater. There were tiny pockets of poor form (there were three six-game streaks that generated one win) in the second tier with the German, but it never felt like promotion was definitively slipping away. However now, relegation, and the financial oblivion that represents, is a real and present danger in 2026.
Mentioning 2026 is pertinent. There are six months and 26 matches still to navigate. It’s not like the season finishes after the Liverpool fixture on December 6. There is so much time for the situation to be improved and Leeds are hardly cut adrift.
They are only in the bottom three on goal difference and while Farke may be a little short in his assertion six wins and a ‘few draws’ are needed for survival, seven wins and six draws should be enough. That does not sound impossible with 26 games still to play, including 13 at home.
Farke after the loss to Aston Villa (Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)
Can Farke deliver the required points tally, though? Could a replacement get more from this squad? The unfortunate reality for Farke, and all managers, is owners do not know the answer to that question until a while after they pull the trigger.
It did not feel like it would take much of a downturn in form for Farke’s position to be under threat this season. 49ers Enterprises certainly weighed up whether to keep the manager on after promotion, before backing him in May, and his position will be an ongoing debate along Elland Road’s corridors of power now.
It should be said, this performance was, in isolation, a marked upgrade on what was delivered at Brighton & Hove Albion and Nottingham Forest. If any supporter needed proof the players are still fighting for Farke, that was evident on Sunday afternoon.
One of the manager’s biggest grievances from those away losses was the lack of bite, the number of duels being lost or missed altogether. That needle was in play against Aston Villa, led by Jayden Bogle, Gabriel Gudmundsson, Ethan Ampadu, Sean Longstaff and Lukas Nmecha, who never let the visitors rest on the ball.
Leeds matched, and bettered, Villa in spells, though the final touch of quality, or luck in Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s case, was absent in both boxes. Again, they conceded two soft goals. Noah Okafor failed to track Donyell Malen before he set up Morgan Rogers, who beat Bogle to the ball.
And then Rogers’ free kick left big questions over goalkeeper Lucas Perri. The jury has remained out on the Brazilian’s injury-interrupted start to the season, but his statuesque observation of Rogers’ placed-effort into the centre of his goal summed up the way the team have watched themselves slip down the table since mid-October.
It was a battling defeat with some grains of optimism that would have been acceptable if the wider context were different. The fact it comes after two abject away losses and makes it five defeats in six with three behemoths to come, alongside the improvements made by Forest and West Ham United, leaves everyone wondering if it was enough to stem the bleeding?
Farke was asked whether he had received any reassurance on his future from chairman Paraag Marathe et al. He said: “We don’t speak about this topic.
“It’s not a topic I think one second about. Since I walked into this club, I’ve always said in every press conference, if you can’t handle the heat, don’t become a manager of Leeds United.”
Whatever happens to Farke, he’s doing it his way. A ninth successive start for Brenden Aaronson was a red rag some Leeds fans did not need before kick-off when the team and manager are so precariously placed.
Across 711 Premier League minutes prior to Sunday, Aaronson’s scored just once and set up one other goal. It is his work rate and defensive reliability that Farke repeatedly trumpets as the reasons for the American’s continued inclusion.
While Daniel James and Wilfried Gnonto were recovering from injury, Aaronson’s presence in the starting line-up was tolerated by the fanbase. But with so many weeks of training now behind the two wingers who began the campaign as Farke’s starters, patience has just about run out. The manager is digging in, however.
“Brenden is a player who polarises and also can be annoying, even for me, because he’s sometimes not clear enough and can be a bit hectic,” Farke said at his post-match press conference.
Farke instructing Aaronson during the match (Richard Sellers/Sportsphoto/Allstar via Getty Images)
Farke added that Aaronson’s work rate, dedication and selflessness are traits he likes to see. He said it is unfair to criticise him when he has run 13km in each of his last three matches and given that he is such a key reason why Leeds’ right flank, unlike their left, is so solid defensively.
The Aaronson criticism is evidently on Farke’s radar, but so too is the criticism of his substitutions and game management. In the 63rd minute, thousands of supporters were chanting ‘make a sub’ to the Leeds dugout. Calvert-Lewin and James would not emerge for another eight minutes.
At full time, as the players and Farke did their lap of appreciation, amid the applause from many home fans, there were clear chants of, ‘You don’t know what you’re doing’.
This is the most pronounced the dissent among the home faithful has been during Farke’s tenure.
He knows where he stands with them, right now. But where will he stand with the ownership over the coming days?