Farke’s assistant frustrated as Leeds fail to take something from City game
Monday, 2nd Mar 2026 11:12 by Tim Whelan
Once again we gave a good account of ourselves against Manchester City, but again we finished the game pointless after failing to take any of our chances while we were on top. And after Daniel Farke’s meltdown after the final whistle, Eddie Riemer had to do the honours in the press conference.
Our manager’s red card means he is not allowed to speak to the media about the game, and that seems to extend to the club’s own official website. Even that hasn’t posted any quotes from the great man, and has only reported assistant manager Eddie Riemer’s comments. Riemer said “Unbelievable shift once again, unbelievable performance, created our chances, our moments”.
“Disappointed we didn’t score, I think we are playing one of the best teams in the world, we need to also convert one of those chances. And then obviously I think we also restricted [them to] very few chances considering it is Manchester City. This one moment, the worst possible moment just before half-time, they played it also well, so we haven’t been switched on in this one moment”.
“As I have said, you play one of the best teams, we are disappointed in each other that we didn’t get something out of this game because we put a really, really great shift once again like this team always does”. It was a night when Leeds maintained the intensity right until the final whistle, but couldn’t quite make it count.
Daniel Farke was able to name an unchanged starting eleven for this match, and there was another boost when we learned that Erling Haaland wasn’t going to be facing the team from the city of his birth. He’s Leeds and he knows he is! We made an excellent start to the game and were all over City in the opening stages.
Calvert-Lewin should have done better than to send the ball wide when a cross from Aaronson found him just in front of goal, but in any case a Var check might have ruled that he had fouled Guéhi in the build up. We then had the Ramadan break so City’s muslim players could take refreshment as dusk had fallen, which will be the subject of a separate article on here.
That might have interrupted our momentum, but we continued to have the upper hand in the contest until around the half hour mark. Calvert-Lewin was put though into the penalty area again, but had to shoot from a narrow angle under pressure from Guéhi, and sent the ball across the face of goal but just past the far post.
Then Aaronson had a couple of chances, the first blocked by Guéhi when the referee incorrectly gave a goal kick instead of a corner, then took a poor touch which gave Donnarumma time to come out and make the save. But on the second of these occasions he might have been ruled offside even if he had found the net.
But as half time approached City started to have more of the game once they had weathered the early storm. Darlow made a fine save from Marmoush, then had to follow up to block O’Reilly after being put back under pressure by a bizarre header back in his direction from Ampadu. Then City took the lead in the second minute of first half injury time.
Aït-Nouri made a clever run to find space on the left side of the box, and in the centre Semenyo got between our central defenders to convert the cross, steering the ball away from Darlow as our keeper scrambled across from covering his near post. And for the early periods of the second half the visitors seemed to be tightening their grip on the game, making us chase around while they retained possession.
They could well have gone further in front from a Guéhi header at a corner, bur Darlow pulled off another wonderful save to turn it round the post. From the 65th minute onwards Farke started to throw more attacking players on in his efforts to rescue something from the game, with Nmecha, Gnonto, James and Piroe all taking the field, but with City starting to drop deep even our best attacking talent couldn’t find a way through.
Our best moment in the second half came when Calvert Lewin chested down a ball on the left side of the area before shooting, but a slightly heavy touch gave him a bit too much ground to cover to catch up with the ball, giving Nunes the chance to nip across to make the block. We could have done with a bit of help from VAR, but they declined a couple of opportunities to intervene on our behalf.
Cherki seemed to stamp on Gruev’s leg as he lay on the ground, and a handball shout was turned down after Nunes’ arm was deemed to be in a ‘natural’ position when the ball bounced off it. Six minutes of injury time were announced, but the referee blew for full time only 15 seconds beyond that time, just as Leeds were in the process of building one final attack.
That was despite a City being booked for time wasting after the extra period had begun, and Rodri taking a while to get back to his feet after some slight contact from Gudmundsson. All of which enraged Daniel Farke, and he was shown a red card after storming onto the field to have a word with the officials after the final whistle.
Peter Bankes had the card out before Farke had got close enough to say anything, but it may well have been the aggression shown in his approach that led to the dismissal. So it all ended as another of those frustrating games when we should have ended up with more points than we did, but at least all our other relegation rivals also lost over the weekend, assuming we can safely ignore Wolves.
The remaining fixtures at home should all be much easier than this one, and if we can repeat this performance against Sunderland on Tuesday night we should take another big step towards safety.
Reuters
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