Leeds United’s Championship season isn’t yet over, with the club getting ready for their two-legged play-off semi-final against one of Daniel Farke’s old clubs, Norwich City.
Despite earning themselves 90 points in the regular season, which would arguably have seen them automatically promoted in just about any other season, a late-season collapse from the all whites saw them drop out of the top two at the death.
Indeed, their form going into the Play-Offs is poor, and they’ve never been promoted via this method.
Leeds could be searching for a new keeper
Therefore, Farke and his backroom staff are going to have to work wonders to get the squad up for two more matches, with the possibility of a third and final game to seal their fate one way or the other.
Regardless of whether they go up or not, there needs to be some improvement within the squad.
One area that they appear to be looking at according to Aftonbladet is in the goalkeeping department, and the name of Rotherham United’s Viktor Johansson has cropped up.
Across the 46 games in the regular 2023/24 Championship season, Illan Meslier let in just 43 goals – only bettered by Leicester’s 41.
It seems strange on that basis why the club might be looking at keepers, unless they feel that a third custodian is needed or they wish to replace reserve keeper, Karl Darlow.
Speaking to MOT Leeds News, Paul Robinson, himself a former keeper at Elland Road, believes that the latter scenario could well be the case.
“With one cap for Sweden, he’s (Johansson) a decent goalkeeper but I don’t think he’s on the level of Meslier,” he said.
“If they are going to sign him as competition for him, then there are maybe questions over Karl Darlow’s future, whether he is sticking around to be a number two.“
With only two months maximum from the end of the Play-Offs to the start of pre-season, clearly the powers that be at Leeds have got to make a decision one way or the other quickly.
The last thing Farke needs after stabilising the ship is another haphazard start to the campaign just as there was last season.
Are you joking, meslier is the worst keeper in the championship, cost us top two, clean sheets were down to defence, now they have dropped in form meslier is getting beat almost every shot on goal .
meslier can not deal with corners the opposition load up the front post and all around him ,he flaps when the ball is swung in. another problemis flippo his positional defending is a joke