Leeds United manager Daniel Farke has had enough of the scrutiny towards American midfielder Brenden Aaronson.
Aaronson is still seeking his first goal contribution of the 2025-26 English Premier League season after helping the Lilywhites earn promotion back to the top flight last spring. The U.S. men’s national team midfielder has struggled to deliver in the final third so far this season, logging six appearances to date.
Despite scoring a career-best nine goals in the EFL Championship last season, many Leeds United fans have questioned Aaronson’s abilities, wondering if he truly still has a place in the squad against tougher opposition.
Farke, who has worked with Aaronson since 2023, admits that the 24-year-old needs to make better final-third decisions, but also believes the criticism from fans won’t help him improve.
“It’s important to not put too much weight on his shoulders,” Farke said about Aaronson to reporters. “Sometimes the feeling with Brenden is that we are a bit over-critical in public. We know Brenden has challenges in his offensive game in terms of decision-making, being a bit clearer and more straight-forward. This is something we speak a lot about.
“It’s not like I press a button and do my magic and he’s a completely different player,” Farke added. “In training we bring him more into positions where he has to take decisions. It’s not like he is not willing to score or not highly motivated. Sometimes because he is so on it he is perhaps losing a bit of his calmness. But it’s not helpful if everyone is always criticizing him.”
Aaronson logged his longest outing this season in Leeds’ 3-1 road league victory over Wolves last Saturday. Whether or not he remains in the starting lineup for this weekend’s showdown with Bournemouth remains to be seen, but one thing for sure is, it doesn’t look like Farke will be giving up on Aaronson anytime soon.
Always been easy for English fanbase to overly criticise American players, but yes he needs to be more decisive at times, and quite frankly he wastes to much energy at times.
I don’t under4stand. He is a midfielder, not a striker. Even if he is an attacking midfielder, they don’t normally score in bunches. There are m,any things a midfielder can do besides score. Is he breaking up passes, in good positions on defense and offense, completing passes, etc., etc.? Guys like Johnny Cardoso, Luca De La Torre, and Wes McKennie aren’t scorers or even strictly defensive mids like Tyler Adams is, but they still provide value in other ways. When I was a midfielder I rarely ever shot, but often set up other people. You can’t really judge a player unless you view videos where you focus on the individual player.
Leeds fans are full of it, and let’s be honest, they’ve never really forgiven him for leaving 2 seasons ago for the Bundesliga. Willy Gnonto isn’t scoring goals that I’ve seen at this level, and Brenden had more goals than him in the Championship last season if I remember correctly, yet WG doesn’t get any criticism, neither does Dan James for that matter…..but I digress!
Ronniet,
BA cost Leeds 32 million,
Dan James cost Leeds 29.5 million
Gnoto cost Leeds 4.5 million
Fans don’t need a logical reason to hate a player; but if you do need a logical reason, return on investment is a good one.