Wayne Rooney's Leeds United Groundhog Day poses reputational question after Daniel Farke first

Here are our five talking points from Leeds United's 3-0 win over Plymouth Argyle at Elland Road in the Championship as the hosts dominated from start to finish in West Yorkshire. This was Groundhog Day for Wayne Rooney.

As he stood on the edge of Elland Road’s away technical area, watching one of his sides demolished without laying a glove on Leeds United, listening to his body size, club allegiances and tabloid scandals chanted for the second time in 2024, he may have wondered if the reputational damage was worth it. One of the finest playing careers in English football is arguably being sullied by consistently poor management.

What’s worse is his second attempt at beating Farke’s Leeds was inferior to his first. On New Year’s Day, League One-bound Birmingham City at least mustered a shot on target and three corners. He was sacked the next day.

Huddersfield Town, another of last season’s relegated sides, visited a little over a year ago and were right up there with the worst opponents of the Farke era. The Terriers were similarly dispatched with multiple first-half goals that rendered the second period irrelevant, although they too managed at least two shots on target and even a consolation.

Expected goal data for Leeds games is readily available going back to the start of the 2018/19 season, Marcelo Bielsa’s first, and no league opponent has registered 0.0 for that metric in that time. Post-match, Farke would admit he has never been involved in a match that saw such domination for one of his teams, with neither a shot nor corner conceded across the 90 minutes.

Plymouth’s fate will not be determined by their results on the road at title challengers like Leeds. It will be decided by home games like those on Tuesday against bottom-of-the-league Portsmouth.

Eleven of Rooney’s 16 most-used players this season were not in Saturday’s starting line-up. This was far from Plymouth’s strongest side on paper, but none of that was United’s concern.

Leeds were overwhelming pre-match favourites and had to get the job done. They took care of business. How many times have you seen the Whites make hard work of beating an underdog at Elland Road down the years? Take the easy ones when you get them and move on.

A day of contrasting debuts

If you need to sum up for anyone exactly how straightforward and comfortable Saturday’s game was, you should show them the timing of Farke’s substitutions and the personnel involved. It’s very rare for the German to look to his bench before the 75th minute and even more unusual for him to play youngsters or fringe players.

Charlie Crew had been named in 12 of Farke’s last 23 league squads before Saturday, but hadn’t had a sniff of action. Farke has been so cautious about throwing Crew into Championship football, he even went to the effort of sourcing an unemployed alternative from the continent two months after the transfer window shut.

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Said alternative, Josuha Guilavogui, has been repeatedly referred to as an emergency back-up by Farke. This is a 34-year-old who was not involved in a professional team’s training set-up for the five months before he joined, someone who would remain on the fringes until Ethan Ampadu effectively makes him redundant once match fit.

And yet, Guilavogui, in the wilderness less than three weeks ago, was given his debut by Farke because of how little jeopardy there was in the match. At the other end of the spectrum, Sam Chambers, half Guilavogui’s age at 17, has not been deemed good enough to even make it onto Farke’s bench in nine of the previous 12 league games.

The Scotland youth international, who came onto the first-team scene in pre-season, has been that 22nd or 23rd man on the long list for Farke. And yet, Plymouth offered so little threat, Farke felt confident blooding Chambers too.

None of the three debutants are about to start getting regular turns from the bench, but if you could have handpicked any fixture to play them in, across the entire campaign, it had to be this one. If you are leading at home against an underdog and coasting with the game won, you have to trust that’s the best chance to bring the teenagers on.

There wasn’t a lot of time for the trio to make a major impact. The game was set in its ways by the time they came on. Each side had found their cadence and knew which way it was heading until full-time.

Crew really did have barely 10 minutes, including injury time, but was able to force a tip over the crossbar from Daniel Grimshaw. Chambers had the best part of half an hour and was lively.

He had one memorable drive to the byline and pull-back that could have been an assist on another day. Guilavogui did, in admittedly comfortable circumstances, look classy in the middle of the park.

With 336 Bundesliga and Ligue 1 appearances under his belt, the hope was this veteran was always going to have that air of quality about him. Even with the limited frontline football he has had over the past two seasons, he looked a step ahead of Plymouth’s dispirited attackers.

Sterner tests will come, which is why that first batch of minutes here was so important to get the Frenchman rolling.

Piroe’s little confidence boost

As the frontman in a team that is unbeaten in eight games, Joel Piroe is hardly bereft of confidence, but three games without a goal and a particularly blunt display at Bristol City posed familiar question marks. Mateo Joseph has barely put a foot wrong this season, despite his lack of goals, and lurks in the background, waiting for Piroe to open the door for him.

The Spaniard is always an option for Farke and it may not have been the hugest surprise if the manager had rolled the dice up top at 2pm yesterday. He kept faith with Piroe, however, and was handsomely rewarded.

The 25-year-old had an early sniff at the near post, but couldn’t guide a speeding pass into him under the crossbar. His goal, a fifth of the season, summed up why he is in the team. It was created by the rest of the team’s relentless deliveries into the penalty box, but finished by his predatory instincts and ice-cold finishing at close quarters.

Before Brenden Aaronson’s goal, the first-touch trap of Daniel James’s cross into the box was majestic from Piroe. He killed the ball dead and, with little else on, went for a backheel that helpfully ricocheted off a defender and into the American’s on-running path.

Goals are a striker’s currency. Yesterday’s will give Piroe that extra spring in his step for Wednesday.

A defensive reinforcement

It had no bearing on the win and is not expected to have much of a bearing on the starting line-up for weeks, but Max Wober’s return was noteworthy on Saturday. When the Austrian was joined in the treatment room by Ethan Ampadu, central defence was looking especially thin for United.

Any injury or suspension to Pascal Struijk or Joe Rodon, and Farke would have been looking to Sam Byram or James Debayo without a recognised defensive midfielder to protect them. Guilavogui’s arrival was the first repair in that area, but Wober is the more natural defender and a left-footed one at that.

He will need weeks of training to build that sharpness back, but that is another full international Farke will hope to rely on when needed. His injury record is not spotless, but if he can stay out of Henry McStay’s department for a prolonged spell, he will prove an asset at this level.

Onto Millwall with rested legs and a clear XI

Trips to The Den always stand out for Leeds. The hostility of the place, coupled with its fans’ raging desperation to intimidate United, one of the north’s remaining bastions of hostility, make it spicier than most of the clashes on an otherwise insipid fixture list.

When you then throw in the fact it’s under the lights on a weeknight with Neil Harris’s Millwall unbeaten in four (prior to facing Burnley on Sunday), you see why this could be one of the trickier away trips of the campaign. However, as with virtually every game this season, if Leeds play to the best of their ability, they should have too much for the Bermondsey outfit.

Long-term injuries aside, the team is in a good place too. Jayden Bogle is likely to return from suspension and immediately replace Byram, while yesterday’s five most advanced players all got taken off early to rest up.

Bogle seems to be the only new face Farke will turn to in the capital. Manor Solomon and Joseph have the quality to be starters, but their preferred slots are occupied by in-form team-mates and neither of them made a major impression from the bench yesterday, even against dire opposition.