If there is anything which sums up the success off this Leeds United team, it’s that picking a potential Player of the Year from the Elland Road outfit is no easy feat.
There was uproar, among some sections of the Leeds United support, when Gus Hamer was picked as the Championship’s 2024/25 stand-out performer in the end-of-season EFL awards.
Yet, it is maybe understandable that Hamer – a talismanic presence in a Sheffield United side driven forward by the influence of a few individuals – registered first in the minds of many judges. In contrast, Daniel Farke has created a Leeds team where, because there are so many potential Player of the Year winners, picking one from such a wide crop feels a little reductive.
Ao Tanaka or Dan James? Manor Solomon or Joe Rodon? Jayden Bogle or Ethan Ampadu? Arguably all six, not to mention the soon-to-be Golden Boot-winning Joel Piroe, would all enter the conversation.
Ilia Gruev would be a stand-out in the vast majority of Championship teams, meanwhile, but continues to fly somewhat under the radar at Leeds purely because of the stellar, more headline-grabbing displays, of those around him.
Yet, if some are guilty of understating Gruev’s importance, such accusations cannot be levelled at Daniel Farke.
Farke feels that Gruev has been a huge factor in why Leeds can boast such an imperious defensive record, as well as impressive returns against the other leading sides in the division.
Leeds United’s Ilia Gruev hailed by Bulgarian legend Krasimir Balakov
Gruev may be the very definition of ‘solid, not spectacular’. But every title-winning team – especially one as free-flowing and attack-minded as Leeds – need someone willing to put out the fires and chomp through the dirty work in behind.
If Tanaka is Leeds’ most complete midfielder since Kalvin Phillips, then Gruev may be the second-coming of Adam Forshaw. Understated and frequently underrated, yet no less integral.
Krasimir Balakov, the legendary former Bulgaria midfielder, cannot speak highly enough of a Sofia-born enforcer who moved to West Yorkshire in a £4 million deal from Werder Bremen in 2023.
Balakov feels that, of the current generation, Gruev is the Bulgarian with the potential to reach the highest of echelons. Maybe even a Champions League trophy, somewhere down the line.
“Right now, it is difficult to find a Bulgarian footballer [who can win a European Cup]. However, we believe that these things will change,” Balakov tells the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency. “We have always had and will always have talents.
“We help with whatever we can and will continue to help. We have Ilia Gruev, whom I have known very well since he was a very small boy. He developed his qualities in Germany and is now in England.
“If he continues like this, he may one day fight for a European Cup.”
Gruev and Ao Tanaka key to Daniel Farke’s brilliant system
First things first, the Premier League awaits Leeds’ Mr Reliable.
And for all those suggesting Gruev lacks the flashiness or the craft of Tanaka, the whizzing pass he played over the top of the Bristol City backline to set up Largie Ramazani’s second during Monday’s 4-0 thrashing was a reminder that he is not just about keeping things neat and tidy in the middle of the park.
EFL expert Ali Maxwell, while struggling to quite explain an approach which has Leeds cutting through opposition teams in a 2-2-6 formation while hardly offering a sniff of vulnerability on the counter, feels that Ilia Gruev is a factor why Farke’s system works so effectively.
“I basically thing their formation in possession is a 2-2-6. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Maxwell says. “I was watching the [1-0 victory over] Oxford and I was like; ‘How are you making this work without conceding like so many big chances on the counter attack’.
“The most notable thing has been the position of Junior Firpo and Jayden Bogle, how rare it is to have two full-backs in a back four who are that attacking and [where] you don’t get caught out very often. It doesn’t make logical sense to me.
“The ability of the defenders – Rodon and [Pascal] Struijk, now Rodon and Ampadu – and the midfielders – Tanaka and Ampadu, now Tanaka and Gruev – to both build-up without giving the ball away in scenarios that would be dangerous defensively, but they are also well positioned to snuff out counter attacks when they do happen.
“It is absolutely, genuinely incredible. I really, really haven’t seen anything like it before.”
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