Ao Tanaka’s £3m Leeds United move has had a disastrous impact at his former club

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Leeds United’s gain – when it comes to their inspired £3 million acquisition – is most certainly proving to be his former employer’s loss.

Casual observes of Championship football would probably choose between Dan James, Manor Solomon or the Golden Boot-chasing Joel Piroe when selecting who they feel is the driving force behind Leeds United’s latest Premier League promotion bid.

As tends to be the way of things, attackers and goalscorers usually hog most of the headlines and a lot of the credit.

Yet, those making a regular pilgrimage to Elland Road will tell you that another albeit less-heralded player is the industrial-strength superglue which holds Daniel Farke’s table-topping team together.

Ao Tanaka does not top a single tactical metric at Leeds. Well, apart from sharing the joint-most interceptions per game [1.3] with central defender Joe Rodon.

Yet, it is Tanaka’s mastery of various trades which makes the £3 million summer signing from Fortuna Dusseldorf arguably the most important cog in this Leeds machine. Not only is Tanaka the man who makes Leeds tick, he is also the spark which lights the fuse for so many attacks while putting out fires when the opposition push forward.

There is a reason why Ao Tanaka currently sits third in FotMob’s Championship rankings.

Leeds United’s gain is Fortuna Dusseldorf’s loss with Ao Tanaka

A trio of outstanding yet very different finishes – a rasping long-ranger against Hull, an impudent backheel against Sheffield Wednesday and a looping header against Sheffield United – ensure Tanaka’s influence is starting to be noticed outside of West Yorkshire.

Many avid Leeds viewers will tell you, meanwhile, that the tireless Japan international is perhaps the greatest difference between this Whites team and the one which fell short at the play-off stage a year earlier.

And as Leeds’ promotion bid ramps up – five wins in their last six – Tanaka’s former club over in Germany are stalling.

Fortuna Dusseldorf are still only four points off leaders Hamburg despite slipping to seventh place. Yet, momentum is quite clearly not on their side. Last weekend’s 2-1 defeat by Greuther Furth means Fortuna have won only five of their last 17 Bundesliga.2 matches.

They must win eight of their final ten games to match last season’s points tally of 63. Furthermore, Fortuna are only four shy of matching the tally of 40 goals they conceded across the entirety of the 2023/24 campaign.

“The performance that Daniel Thioune’s team showed in the 2-1 defeat was a description of the current level of performance,” German publication WAZ explain, attributing Fortuna’s struggles to a ‘lack of quality’ in key areas.

No more so than in the midfield zone Tanaka used to patrol with such purpose and poise.

“The current team lacks players with leadership skills, like Ao Tanaka,” WAZ add. “Basically, Fortuna lacks the quality to completely dominate an opponent and exert great pressure on the opponent’s goal.”

Leeds heading for promotion as Fortuna face another Bundesliga miss

Only two Fortuna players produced a higher pass completion rate than Tanaka’s 88.5 per cent as promotion.

As WAZ explain, doing the basics – particularly when it comes to executing simple yet effective passes – is something which also appears to have deserted a team who also suffered play-off heartbreak a year ago.

Fortuna came within a whisker of the Bundesliga before losing to a stunning Bochum fight-back over two legs. They would be lucky to even get that far this time around.

“Anyone who had to count the number of bad passes and ball losses on Friday against Furth would have failed miserably. Simple passes over a few metres went wrong, and a few simple misunderstandings caused unrest in the team.

“So many technical inabilities are visible in the game.”

Fortuna Dusseldorf’s Sporting director Klaus Allofs summed it up best in December, as their form started to turn following a bright start. Fortuna knew they had a good player in Ao Tanaka. But it is only following his departure that they are starting to appreciate just how good.

“We were aware, but the public perhaps didn’t really know, who we actually had in our ranks,” Allofs sighed. “How important guys like Tanaka were in terms of our stability.

“It wasn’t that spectacular at times, especially with Ao. But he had an incredibly large presence and [with him in the midfield] we played very balanced. The team, or other players, can’t currently match that form.

“We did very well for a while during the first half of the season and thought that we could compensate for the departures quite well. But, unfortunately, that didn’t continue.”