Ex-Leeds United record signing encourages January transfer movement to avoid 23/24 issue

Farke currently has Joel Piroe leading the line and leading the team in scoring with 10 goals to add to the 14 he scored en route to the Championship play-off final last season. Mateo Joseph, who began the campaign as Farke's first-choice number 9, has played more of a cameo role in recent weeks, while Patrick Bamford is currently out injured with a hamstring problem and could return by the start of February.

Piroe has been described as more of a 9 and a half than an out-and-out number 9, whereas Joseph plays the role differently to his more senior colleague with perhaps more of a traditional approach. Where Piroe will be found in and around the edge of the area, arriving late, Joseph pops up closer to goal looking for crosses and cut-backs. Both Piroe and Joseph have shown playmaker abilities and have five and three assists respectively this season. Bamford could be considered more of a targetman than Joseph but also likes to make a nuisance of himself and seek opportunities closer to goal after doing his link-up bit.

Outside of that trio Leeds do not have another natural senior option. They agreed to send Joe Gelhardt out on loan this week and Farke has previously suggested that in an emergency case he could use a wide player like Willy Gnonto centrally.But Deane believes unpredictability up front could be key for the Whites as they enter the title run-in and would like his old employers to look for it in the mid-season market this month.

"If they can strengthen in the window, it would be great," he said. "It's a thing that I don't really understand, that people don't pick up on it. It's great playing good football all the way through the year. But once you get to March, April, May, you need to just get points. And to do that, you need forwards who can score different types of goals. It was always something that when I played in sides that won promotion, we had strikers who could do different things at different times. If you can pick off different strengths of forwards, then you've got those as options."

Deane's concern is that he believes he detected predictability in this area for Leeds in the latter stages of last season. Whether or not that was the case, Piroe only scored five times in the second half of the Championship campaign, Joseph did not find the net and although Bamford got seven goals, he scored just once in his final seven outings before a knee injury ended his involvement and kept him out of the play-offs. Georginio Rutter, who operated mostly as a number 10 in the second half of 2023/24, could never be described as predictable but he only added three goals during that time. Leeds could however rely on the wide areas, from which Crysencio Summerville, Gnonto and Daniel James scored nine, seven and six respectively between matchday 24 and the play-off final.

"One thing you don't want to do is, you don't want to leave it and then become predictable, which I think they did last year," he told the YEP. "They didn't have something that was a little bit different, you know, somebody who had extraordinary pace down the middle, or could break the lines, or was more robust as a forward. It was all quite predictable. And I think if you've got four, five strikers in your squad that can do something a little bit different that will throw the opposition off, then that's how you maintain your position. It becomes a real departmental situation, where you know the team might not be playing well, you might have to go longer. You might have to do things differently. But if you've got players who can adapt to that situation, you've done all the foundation work all the way through. You don't want to wait until you know two or three teams are watching you two or three weeks in advance, and then they're actually putting a plan in place because they know how predictable your front players are."

Farke has repeatedly said that one of his priorities is to protect the chemistry and togetherness that has been fostered among the current squad and even if he regularly describes it as a small squad he is not in favour of having too many players who are not getting gametime around the place.Leeds are staying vigilant to the possibility of strengthening the squad in January according to Farke, who wanted but did not get a natural number 10 in the summer, however they are not expecting to do much in the way of business.

So far the loan exits of Gelhardt and teenage midfielder Charlie Crew are the only transactions the Whites have had to deal with.

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