Leeds United boss Daniel Farke turns blind eye to chaos and explains striker sub conversation

The result never looked in doubt after a contentious early opener. Junior Firpo’s cross deflected up into the air and Patrick Bamford appeared to flick an elbow out as the ball went past him. The striker raced off to celebrate, claiming the goal as Rotherham protested to referee Andrew Madley for a handball decision that never came. Crysencio Summerville’s second half goals, one of which was a Panenka penalty, put the game to bed by the hour mark and allowed Farke to ring the changes and rest some legs as Leeds cantered to a sixth-straight league victory.

At half-time and then again at a point in the second half, :Leeds were sitting second in the Championship table thanks to Huddersfield Town taking 2-0 and 3-2 leads against Southampton. The Saints battled back, however, to win 5-3 and continue their own incredible run of form. Farke was unaware at full-time and will not be getting into a habit of checking up on his fellow promotion contenders. “I didn't have a look right now on the other Championship results,” he said. “I know it was a draw in the early kick-off, but at the moment I'm not interested. Perhaps this evening on the sofa but I mentioned this, it's not important where you are after 20, 30, 31 games. From game day 40, 42 you can have a look at what happens on other games but you can't influence it. I want to give this example to my players, we just have to focus on ourselves. If we're there with a proper amount of points, if we keep going with this points average, if we can maintain this over 46 games then you're in a top class position come May. We have 15 more games before we can speak about this.”

What Farke was happy to speak about, in measured terms, was his side’s victory at Elland Road. It was not one to wax particularly lyrical about but he was content. “Let's not get too carried away,” he said. “It was a comfortable win, 3-0. No other team has scored so many goals against Rotherham, since Christmas their biggest loss was just two goals. All the other games were a win, a draw or a loss by one goal. If you win with a clean sheet, scoring three, you have to be happy. We've had this efficiency topic in recent weeks. Normally when I judge chances we've created it should be more like a tennis result but we should not sound disrespectful. They never gave up, had a few set-pieces.”

The game’s major talking point was that early opener that Bamford claimed. Rotherham manager Leam Richardson revealed that he had received an apology from referee Madley, who in turn had relayed Bamford’s admission that it his his arm and went in. Farke said he had not been able to watch a replay but felt the incident was rendered largely inconsequential by the manner in which Leeds went on to win. He said: “I haven't watched it back, someone mentioned it's possible handball. I haven't watched it, it's not possible to judge it. If it was handball it should probably not have been allowed. But over the course of the season everything is a bit equal. If it was really handball then it's one to 14 [decisions] against us. Normally it's an important scene but today it was not because we created so many chances and scored so many goals. Even if this had been disallowed it would still be the same outcome, it was not a decisive moment, but I haven't watched it back.”

Bamford was one of those Farke opted to withdraw in the later stages, with Tuesday’s away game at Swansea City looming large on the horizon, and the manager engaged his striker in a conversation as the substitution was completed. “I would have been disappointed [as a striker], we created so many chances, he worked so hard, they have to open the defence a bit more – I sensed that normally as a striker you should be disappointed to come off, I said to him there are perhaps two or three easy goals if he stays on but we have to think about Tuesday and two difficult away games,” said Farke. “He's not the youngest anymore and needs to rest a bit. He was not unbelievably disappinted, but I wanted to explain it a bit more proactive, but he’s so experienced and intelligent, he immediately understood it was the right decision to give him some rest.”