What Paraag Marathe has said on four key Leeds summer issues including transfers

On the back of the final day of the season, a number of questions lingered over Leeds United and Daniel Farke himself.

While it never seemed likely he would leave his post, his press conference comments ahead of the final home game against Brighton & Hove Albion left some pondering why he had reiterated the desire to retain the ‘final say’ on sporting matters.

Club chairman Paraag Marathe, Farke - who has a year left on his contract - and other key figures, have been plotting how to action next season’s plans ever since safety was sealed.

Meanwhile, with Leeds surviving relegation fairly comfortably in the end, there were questions over how the club would approach the summer market, especially given that the new Squad Cost Ratio finance rules slightly shrink the club’s spending scope initially.

In the last few weeks, questions on all of these topics have been addressed by Marathe. Here is what he has said on the four big issues when speaking to reporters earlier this month.

Marathe: “My hope and expectation is that he's with us for a while. So I know that he has got another 12 months. But I think we both have an interest in keeping this going.

“And so at the right time and in the right way, we'll have those conversations. And yeah, he’s a big part of our future. I'm excited about him coaching the squad and hopefully he’ll be doing it much longer than this season as well.”

Marathe: “The bar has been raised, right? Last season, we were a newly-promoted side, a Championship club that had to basically build on the fly. So now it's a higher bar.

“And so just by the nature of that, I think there'll be fewer [but] that are more high quality, just because to get into our squad and to get onto the pitch is a much higher bar than it was 12 months ago. So we're looking to sprinkle in some additions that really help us. And at the same time, there'll be some outs.

“It is important to keep the core together. The core of any team, as they spend more time and gel together and coalesce together, it creates where the sum of the parts are greater than the individual pieces.

“The core is really important to keep and so I don't want to say everybody is off limits because what if someone came for £500million for somebody, right? But there is no intent for our core, core group to move on because they had career seasons.

"We've got some really talented players... so the bar to get into the squad and get minutes is pretty high.

"So just by that... maybe there's going to be a few moonshots here and there to get some really high creative differential players.”

Marathe: “I think we're going to be pretty strategic about how we spend. I don't want to make any blanket statements because, competitively, I don't want to hurt us in the market, but we know we have to improve the squad. There's going to be ins, there are going to be a few outs.

“Obviously, PSR and SCR change things a little bit in the short term. In the short-term, actually PSR, for us, pre-stadium redevelopment, we actually have a little less flexibility with SCR than we would have had with PSR.

“But we still have room to do what we need to do, so I would just say we'll be a little bit more strategic about it, and we know we have to improve the squad.

“So this summer, you won't see much difference. Like I said, it's almost even a little bit trickier.

"But as the stadium goes through, SCR benefits those that do have really strong local bases, whether it's by virtue of a good-sized stadium that sells out, selling your kits, having good commercial opportunities, everything that you could do organically as a club.

“And so it does benefit the clubs that can create their own revenue. And obviously, we have that potential, and we will have that potential as we do the stadium expansion. And so in time, we will be able to transition to that more than upper echelon clubs to be able to do that.”

Marathe: “I don't think any power changed over the three years. Everybody's in this together, we are not going to sign a player that Daniel doesn't want or that doesn't fit his system. Period.

“He has all the power in that sense. We're also not going to sign a player that costs £500 million, because it just doesn't work, so maybe in that sense I have the power.

“We're not going to sign a player that doesn't fit whatever contract structure. In that sense Adam [Underwood, director of football] and Robbie [managing director] have the power.

"The group works really well together but everything is always run by him [Farke] first and last in terms of 'does this player fit?' and could we do this or this compromise or that sacrifice or trade off.

“So I don't think [Farke's press conference comments] was necessarily about reasserting power. I think it was just, let's make sure that we keep it in the same system."

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