We could have done with a public announcement from the board a couple of weeks ago, but today Paraag Marathe has finally confirmed that Daniel Farke will remain in charge of the Leeds United team as we start life back in the Premier League.
Ever since we clinched promotion on Easter Monday we’ve had to put up with idle speculation from some newspapers (hello, useless Daily Mail) that the 49ers were thinking of replacing Farke despite his achievement in delivering such a stellar season to get Leeds promoted. This was of course based on his struggles at Norwich once they were in the Premier League.
We all knew he deserved the right to have a crack at the top division with Leeds, but in the absence of any public backing from the board we started to wonder if there was any ‘smoke without fire’, and the manager’s rather withdrawn demeanour after the final whistle yesterday made us wonder if he’d been given some bad news behind the scenes.
But thankfully today we learned that the exact opposite was the case, that whenever Farke and Marathe had spoken privately the manager was assured that he was still very much part of the 49ers plans for the season ahead. Today Marathe told BBC Radio Leeds: "I have ended the speculation. He is my man”.
"We continue to stay in touch all the time. I did tell him privately that I'm looking forward to moving forward together, and I just didn't feel like it was my time to speak just because someone wanted to put out a rumour or whatever. It wasn't my place in time to speak at that point. But I did talk to him privately."
"I was waiting for the season to conclude. I wanted to win a trophy, just like Daniel did, just like the players did, just like all the staff did, and we got that goal. My plan was always to come and speak to you all right after the season concluded, and so that time is now, and I want to tell you all that I'm very excited to run it back with Daniel.
And he went on to heap praise on our manager, who has two years of his contract still to run. "He is such a calming force. You know, presence would be an understatement if I say calming presence, he's just a calming force for supporters, for players, for the club. He really has a superpower that way. He told you all he was 100 per cent confident that we're going to the Prem, and he believed it. I love him for it. He has that conviction and belief.”
The started to look towards the challenge of ensuring that Leeds don’t drop straight out of the Premier League that we’ve worked so hard to reach. "I'm under no illusions that it's going to be easy. I know all the stats, last season's three promoted clubs went right back down. Two years ago, three promoted clubs went right back down. But we have something that they don't.
We have Daniel Farke, first of all, and a tremendous coaching staff. We have players that believe that the sum of the parts are greater than the individual pieces. We have a community that supports our club. We have a 28,000-person paid season ticket waiting list - 28,000 is more than many Premier League clubs' actual season ticket list.”
"We have great partners in Red Bull, and now, obviously our front of shirt goes up significantly. So there's an opportunity for us to take all of that extra revenue, and literally all of that extra revenue, and pour it right back onto the pitch. Whatever they will let us spend, we’ll spend. I can comfortably say that we are going to spend the very last penny that we can, to be competitive in the Premier League.”
"I feel that we’re going to be better equipped than the previous clubs. We have a really great team working together to go and attack the transfer market. Maybe we got ahead of ourselves, but we’ve been working on Premier League market plans for the last six months.”
All of which is great news. Farke can now take a well earned break, while the powers that be at the club can start to work on his shopping list of players he needs to improve his squad for the challenge of Premier League football.