Perspective is needed when you drop to second-bottom in the Premier League with three games to go. Perspective is needed when Everton score 62 per cent of their entire season’s away goal tally in one match.
Adam Forshaw, 31 and playing, in his words, with his career on the line feels he has that. The Leeds United midfielder remains confident he and his team–mates are fighting for everything in the trenches with real confidence they can get out of this mess.
Monday was one of those days you’re left refusing to look at the league table for fear of how bad the damage really is. Leicester City held up their side of the bargain with a hammering at Fulham, but the Toffees and Nottingham Forest piled the pressure on.
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It was a night which brutally exposed any lingering hopes Leeds might stay up as the least worst side in that dogfight with others failing to pick up points, just as they have. United are in it up to their knees and staring down the Championship barrel.
“People probably are thinking we're going to struggle and we may go down, but I genuinely do think we'll still get out of it,” said Forshaw. “The games are well winnable and we showed at times at the weekend we've got discipline, we've got structure already and yes, I’m confident.”
“It (Everton’s win) was a shock, but there is probably going to be results that shock everyone at this time. It happens every single year. We're going to have to win games anyway ourselves.
“I didn't think it changed that much. If we have a good weekend and win the game, they don't win theirs, we’re back on top because the goal difference is good.
“I didn't really feel that down about the result because we're still going to have to win games ourselves.”
Forshaw was speaking at Thorp Arch shortly before new boss Sam Allardyce hosted his pre-Newcastle United press conference. Eddie Howe’s side have won eight of their last 10 matches on their irrepressible march towards the Champions League.
Allardyce’s number four is expected to be at the heart of his team selection come Saturday lunchtime. In the space of one match, Forshaw has gone from tentative cameos off the bench to the cornerstone of this survival mission.
As with much of the past three-and-a-half years, this campaign has been a challenge for Forshaw on the medical front. Pre-season injury set him back in the fight with Marc Roca and Tyler Adams for August starts under Jesse Marsch, but a groin problem would see him missing for four months until after Christmas.
There was a groin repair in October, on the opposite side to the longstanding hip issue which wrecked two years of his career. It allowed him to work back to availability after the World Cup, but Forshaw did not feel right.
“In all honesty, I wasn't right,” he said. “It was probably 60 per cent or something, but I knew Jesse and the team could have done with me at the time because Tyler was suspended for the games over Christmas.
“I was desperate to make it right and try and get back in the team, but I knew deep down I wasn't right. When I played the Man City game, he brought me off because he wanted me available for the Newcastle game.
“I was clinging on really. The three days were a quick turnaround with the games from the 28th to New Year's Eve. I was trying my hardest to help the team, but I just knew.”
Another full rehab programme was devised by Rob Price, head of medicine and performance, but this time with the help of physiotherapist James Moore. Moore, a hip and groin specialist, recently worked with Andy Murray during his own journey back from an injury nightmare.
That rehabilitation has got Forshaw to a place where he feels confident once again in his body. He’s at a point where he would not be playing if he did not feel he could do himself justice.
Out of contract this summer, though the club hold an option to extend, Forshaw knows his career is on the line when it comes to this final burst of games and staying fit.
“I do feel a pressure and a responsibility,” he said. “I'm trying my hardest to help the situation and the team as much as possible, but I wouldn't now put myself back in if it wasn't right.
“My career is on the line a little bit as well and I do physically feel good enough and ready to help.”
With just two appearances in the eight months between Forshaw’s cameos against Brighton & Hove Albion and Liverpool, he has had plenty of time to watch this troubled campaign play out with some perspective. His view on Marsch especially tallies with the board’s decision to retain the American for as long as they did.
“I always felt like, under Jesse, he was so close,” he said. “Even when games didn't go our way. Even looking back to the start of the season, we should have had nine points after three games.
“We ended up losing the lead from a two-nil position away at Southampton, so we ended up with seven points, which is a good start, but you look back now and you think tiny things like that. There's two more points there.
“Then again under Javi [Gracia], we started off, got some points in games early on and then the Crystal Palace game was probably arguably one of the best halves of football the team’s played this season. They scored just before half-time.
“It's the minor details in this league. The Palace lads rode the moments in that game and went in at half-time one-all somehow and then they go on and win the game.
“Up until the Palace game under Javi we were doing really well and then it just seemed confidence was knocked from the team a little.”
Palace. The undoubted turning point in Gracia’s tenure. From lower mid-table cruisers to relegation battlers across a half-time break shrouded in mystery and rumour.
As ever, social media allowed the allegations to breathe and multiply. A variety of players have been pointed at with half-hearted murmurings about fights. Last month, Brenden Aaronson told LeedsLive there was nothing in it and Forshaw was only more emphatic.
“That’s absolute rubbish,” he said. “I’m close enough with Bill (Luke Ayling) and [have] been here a long time together and we get on really well. It was Bill that got mentioned, wasn’t it?
“I was actually out warming up and then that night I’d had a load of messages saying ‘What went on? Was there a fight?’ I spoke to him (Ayling) straight away and he said it was absolute rubbish.
“I sit next to Marc in the changing rooms and his name was mentioned in an interview. There's nothing that went on at all.”
Forshaw maintains the camaraderie behind the scenes is stellar and has only been improved by the arrival of Allardyce, who has pleasantly surprised some at Thorp Arch with his defiance of expectations. Far from two banks of five and drilling set-pieces for nine hours a day, the players are benefiting from attention to mental health and headspace.
“He’s been really big on the mental side of it,” said Forshaw. “It’s something that has surprised me. I just wouldn't have maybe thought [he’d go that way].
“[He] continuously mentions it in every meeting. He’s big on the headspace we're putting ourselves in. Imagery, meditation, things like that.
“That's one thing I've definitely took from [his approach].”
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