A few moments to epitomise Leeds United’s season. After Patrick Bamford returned from injury and scored the late, late equaliser against Brentford, a group of his teammates piled on top of him in mass celebration. As Bamford walked from the bundle, he reached for the back of his leg and winced. Later came the bad news: Leeds’ best centre-forward had injured himself celebrating.
Another? OK. The news that Kalvin Phillips had suffered a serious hamstring injury of his own in the same game was supplemented with the detail that he might use the next two months to have shoulder surgery that he put off over the summer so he could compete in the European Championship. It presents an image of Leeds players held together by parcel tape, PVA glue and optimism. Marching on together (but with a limp).
Phillips is Leeds’ master conductor. He doesn’t just dictate the tempo of play and doesn’t just set the example with his pressing intensity; he is a radiating ball of Yorkshire spirit, affecting whichever players are fit enough to play around him. Without him, it falls apart. Leeds have lost nine and drawn one of the last 12 Premier League matches he has missed.
Leeds supporters were adamant that their club would not suffer second season syndrome this season. Perhaps they simply repeated the mantra to ward off bad spirits. But ahead of a daunting December (Chelsea, Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool), they sit six points above the bottom. The Premier League is bunched from eighth place down, but that provides little solace. Supporters are becoming convinced that bad luck will ruin this campaign.
More on Premier League
But the uncomfortable question is quite how much this is down to luck. It is not so much the quantity of Leeds’ injuries at any one time as much as the constant rotation of the sufferers, passing each other to and from the medical room like ships in the night. But it is fair to ask if there’s an issue workload and accumulated soft tissue fatigue when three players in the same match suffer hamstring issues.
Bielsa’s reaction to those injuries has been interesting too. Last weekend, when central defender Liam Cooper went off injured, he moved Phillips into central defence, Daniel James from the left wing to centre forward, Tyler Roberts from the central striker role to be a No 10 and Jack Harrison, the substitute, onto the left wing. It’s a huge amount of change for a team to deal with when they are already coping with the loss of a first-team stalwart.
The obvious retort is that Bielsa’s options are limited – indeed, there was no first-team central defender on his bench. But then that is the manager’s call. Upon his arrival at Elland Road, Bielsa vowed to trim the size of the squad down: “I like to have a lean squad that’s not too top heavy in terms of numbers and the numbers in the squad so everyone is getting regular game time.”
Related Stories
And Bielsa has backed up that intention. No team in the Premier League used fewer players last season and no manager made fewer changes to the starting XI from match to match. Bielsa has been keen to point out that Leeds suffered injuries then too and coped well, but then last season Bamford, Luke Ayling, Stuart Dallas and Jack Harrison missed two league matches between them and Leeds struggled during the nine that Phillips was absent for. Perhaps it is as simple as that: Leeds have had the wrong players out this season.
Bielsa barely tries to hide his stubbornness. It is the sword by which the success of his teams lives and dies, the end game of modern football’s great dogmatist. He is beloved by Leeds United supporters because everybody told them that it wouldn’t work out and he told them it would if they just believed in him and it worked out better than even they could have hoped.
But as Bielsa continues to talk down the chances of January spending, some are beginning to fear that this season may break Leeds and their manager. The methodology – making do, avoiding spending for spending’s sake, giving chance to academy graduates – is exactly what we demand from other managers. But that’s the rub: It only works as a principle when it’s working in practice.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3IEG4xe
Post a Comment