Leeds' Elland Road run has to outlast a kick-off they have not won at since 2022
Daniel Farke says it is no coincidence that Leeds have gone 21 Premier League matches without a win before 3pm. Tottenham come to Elland Road at 12:30 on three straight league wins, and the striker Leeds build around has a problem with his foot.
Daniel Farke did not argue with the number. Leeds have not won a Premier League match that kicked off before 3pm since August 2022, a run of 21, and on Thursday he called that no coincidence, pointing to the club's old relegation battles and admitting that the atmosphere at lunchtime is not that easy to replicate. "It's our responsibility to fire them up, this is what we try to do," he said.
Tottenham should win narrowly and without conceding, because a Leeds side this short of goals has no obvious way through if Calvert-Lewin misses out.
It matters because Elland Road has held up the rest of the season. Leeds have not lost a league game there since Sunderland won 1-0 on 3 March, eight matches, four of them won. Yet the wins have stopped: the last was 4-1 over Newcastle in mid-September, and the three draws and two defeats since have brought two goals, none in the last two away from home. James Trafford's mistake helped the 2-0 defeat at Bournemouth along, and Farke says he stays in goal.
Those two goals are why Thursday's team news landed as it did. Noah Okafor and Anton Stach managed only individual work this week, and Farke calls both major doubts. Dominic Calvert-Lewin then missed training with a setback to his foot, though his manager is "carefully optimistic" he returns on Friday. Joe Rodon is back in full training, which helps a defence that has conceded eight in nine league games, but the trouble at Leeds is at the other end.
Tottenham bring the opposite problem. Roberto De Zerbi's side took 34 shots against ten-man Crystal Palace, the most by any team in a Premier League game this season, and scored twice. "If we want to be perfect, we have to be nastier," he said. Three wins have lifted them a point above Leeds after a start of six league games without one, and a fourth in a row would be their first such run since October 2023. They have won on each of their last three visits here, and Leeds have not kept them out in 16 meetings.
So Leeds need what lunchtime has refused them for more than four years, a full-throated ground and a win. Farke wants 40 points as quickly as possible and has 11. Elland Road will carry them only as far as it can do its work in daylight.
