Bournemouth v Leeds United: Daniel Farke on balancing unpredictability and security

In some respects, they have a point. With five draws in their eight Premier League games this season, and only 15 goals for and against, you could hardly put this Leeds team alongside the one which thrillingly caught the top-flight cold under Marcelo Bielsa.

A predictable 4-2-3-1 side is what manager Farke craves. He had it in the Championship, and would like to work back towards it again.

Sacrificing the defensive foundation which has put his team seventh in the division ahead of Saturday's game at Bournemouth is a no-no.

But when Leeds cannot out-spend the teams they are mixing it with, and therefore cannot simply out-talent them, Farke is looking to unpredictability as his secret weapon.

Since the Road to Damascus moment at half-time at Manchester City 11 months ago, they have been with few exceptions a 3-4-2-1 team.

On paper.

But at a time when Leeds need extra flair, one man is standing out.

Jayden Bogle is in theory the right wing-back, but plays very differently to the man on the opposite side, Gabriel Gudmundsson. The Swede by and large works very effectively in fairly straight lines, getting back to do his defensive work and forward to usually overlap Noah Okafor.

Bogle – or when he replaces him from the bench, Daniel James – is Leeds' wildcard, free to pop up anywhere from right-back to inside-left.

The reason he can do it and Gudmundsson cannot is James Justin, a right-sided centre-back who at times plays more like a conventional attacking right-back taking up positions Bogle would otherwise need to. Joe Rodon was getting better at it too, before the hamstring injury he this week returned to training from.

Justin and Bogle’s jobs are crucial.

"It's very important to be a bit like a hybrid team," explains Farke. "When I speak with opposing managers after the game, they always say, 'Daniel, what are you doing, do you play a three-man or a four-man formation? And in which phase?'

"This helps us to be a bit unpredictable and difficult to be pressed. We play different processes.

"I would rather play a more or less similar style because this is how you win titles and many points and dominate the league.

"Maybe when we won the (Championship) league and we just did our stuff, won the league with 100 points, it was a bit boring. We were always playing the same. Can't you do something different?

"Right now, it's a bit like can't we be a bit more boring and just do what we want?

"You have to die one death in football and at the moment where we are as a club, it's important we are a bit unpredictable.

"It's difficult for the opponent to say what formation do we play. Is Jayden Bogle a winger or wing-back or a full-back? This flexibility and unpredictability is one of our strengths and we need it."

Finding more goals from this team is becoming a regular talking point at Elland Road, and surely behind closed doors in the coaches’ room at Thorp Arch too.

But changing the balance to take more risks is not on Farke’s agenda.

"It's where we are as a club," he insists. "We couldn't afford to buy the offensive players other teams have.

"Arsenal buy offensive players for £100m (only a slight exaggeration). We are also not in the category like Brighton who buys in £40m, £50m, £60m players.

"So we are lacking a bit of effectiveness. In terms of expected goals we should have been way higher.

"But we still scored many goals – of course not the last two games.

"It's sometimes a bit of a coincidence that you have such a period. In the beginning of the season we were scoring goals for fun – four against Newcastle.

"To improve the individual quality of the players you work on your processes but we can't afford to say we'll do without our defensive strength.

"Our offensive quality is not (such) that we can dominate opponents exactly like we were doing at Championship level. We are not the big dogs right now in this league.

"By being defensively solid and difficult to beat we have just lost one game, away at Arsenal. Even there we were, I would say, the better side for at least 75 minutes.

"Even if we would change and bring more offensive-thinking players on the pitch, our quality there is not that we dominate all teams.

"It's a fine balance in the mid- and the long-term on the route to developing into a top-half club, a club who wants to fight in a few years perhaps for Europe or other targets.

"I love to win the league. I've done it four times in my career .

"But right now we are in a situation where nearly every other team has more individual quality than us.

"You can't just say the opponent has to deal with what we offer, that would be naive.

"This is what several teams have done and they were always promoted from the Championship, relegated without any chance.

"We want to be different.

"On the way we want to evolve to be more and more dominant.

"To have the best defence and best offence (at Leeds) and straight away we win the title, you need a magician and I'm not a magician, sorry."