Jesse begins on injury news
It’s a unique week, we have a lot of guys that are hopeful they can turn around but have a lot of little issues. So I'm not going to give you full updates and I’m hopeful that some of the questionable guys can turn around and be ready to go.
We want to put a strong team on the pitch. We know 6000 fans are going down, I know the history of us losing 21 years ago at Cardiff, and we expect that there'll be a very spirited for this match. So we want to put the best team we can on the pitch.
Patrick was in training today. So that was a big step in the right direction. Not predicting him to be ready for the match, but at least in training, Adam would probably not be available for this match, but shouldn't be training next week.
Read more: Jesse Marsch and Leeds United told they should have 'no problems' against Cardiff City
Stuart had a follow up operation, too, because they thought they had a little bit of an infection so they just cleaned that out but he's back and feeling good.
On Stuart, was it another operation, on the back of the recent one?
Yes, he had the first one and then the second one as they felt there was some things limiting sensation in his knee. They went in and took out screws and cleaned a little bit of the knee area up. From that he picked up infection so then he went back and had another surgery but he’s feeling good and back home.
And Sinisterra?
He was on the pitch individually today looking really strong, sprinting, running and looking close. We’re hopeful that at some point next week he’s back in training, so that’s really positive.
He won’t be ready this weekend.
It's your first experience coaching in the FA Cup. So what experience have you had outside of being involved?
Well, the FA Cup finals are big thing in the US too. So even before I was professional, when I was a professional, a lot of people get up early Saturday, Sunday mornings to go to pubs in the US and watch the FA Cup finals. So it's big I think, even the vernacular of like, it's ‘the FA Cup final’. This is a big match I think even in the US. So yeah, the opportunity to compete in it, the US Open Cup I won as a player I think five times, four or five times, and I always valued the cup matches as a chance to win a trophy. So obviously here the challenge of winning the FA Cup is massive, but we're excited about it.
How much are those 6,500 fans motivation for you to give them something after a horrible run over the last 21 years?
Yeah, I've heard a little bit about the recent history of some of the matches. I've heard about the history between Cardiff and Leeds. Leeds obviously won this tournament with Don Revie. So, it's kind of in the blood of the club still.
I think we want to make sure we represent ourselves in a big way down in Cardiff. It means a lot that our fans are going down there and that we want to put a good team on pitch.
I don’t know if you remember back in August, Angus Kinnear said that him and Victor had a poor run in the competition. Are they still aligned with your thoughts on this?
Angus spoke to me last week and said maybe we should focus on having a good FA Cup run, I said ‘message received’.
Max Wober, has he settled in and are we likely to see him?
Max has I think settled in really well. He had a good training session today. I think again, he understands what I'm looking for out of him and out of our team. So we'll see how fit and ready he is for this match, but he will be in the mix.
How much do you feel it is your team now, now that you have a few players coming in?
To be honest, I felt like this has been our team from the start. I never look at it as these players are were from the former manager and this is from the new man and my time. When you work with a team you want to try to maximise the potential of every player in the group as a whole.
The reality is most of the players when you go to a new team you inherit, the club has been very supportive about trying to bring some players that I think could fit what we're trying to achieve here that I've worked with in the past, but I never looked at it that way, I enjoy getting to know people from different cultures and getting to maximise the most out of what a team is and I've enjoyed that here and I've been welcomed here maybe as well or better than anywhere I've ever been.
Joe Gelhardt has had limited minutes, I think just over half an hour in the last five games, how’s his confidence?
I was not happy and I told Joffy right after the game that I should have put him on earlier. I thought Willy was doing well, I thought Rodrigo was doing well, we had just put Jack in and Jack was doing well, Klichy was doing well. So it wasn't so easy to just take one of those players off the pitch but from the 80th minute, from the 75th minute on, I wanted to get Joffy on the pitch, because I know him and I know he can make plays. I know when the game is like that and we're pushing that he's one that can make the difference. So I wasn't happy that I didn't put him on earlier.
I think he's been training really well, I think he had a really good run up to this moment when we had our second pre-season. It's just that Rodrigo has been a big piece of what we've done and he continues to replace and he continues to score goals so it's not so easy to take him off but we can still use Joffy and Rodri at times as well.
Do you share that the view that Sunday, on paper, looks like the ideal place to make a statement of intent?
Yeah, I think I've been on sort of different ends of what a Cup match can be, David and Goliath as player and manager. I think it's really important to understand that for both teams, it's really important. We have to expect the best out of Cardiff going down there, it won't be easy and when we got the draw we weren't happy because we thought this would be very difficult.
So our mindset is to prepare for a very important match in a good way and make sure that the group we put on the pitch represents exactly what we want to be.
On a personal level, have you dreamt about lifting the FA Cup with Leeds United or going deep into competition?
Yeah, I mean, talking about raising trophies right now we're not at that stage as a club, but you don't do this without that kind of focus in mind. We're continuing to try to build a process here that's about improvement, week by week, year by year.
But, you know, even seeing what Crystal Palace did last year, I think for people it’s still is a reminder that the possibilities are there, but you have to just take it one step at a time.
Two thirds of possession on Wednesday against West Ham and three times as many shots on target, you spoke about players playing without a lack of fear, how do you try and get that message across about being braver, showing enterprise and industry?
Yeah, what we've seen from our group a lot this year is that against the big opponents that we play aggressively, especially against the ball and defensively, and then we try to find ways to capitalise the transition and still try and find ways to command the game with the ball.
Then there are other opponents that we play that on the day we think we can be better than and I want to see our team played from the beginning of those matches with more courage, with more endeavour, and to be able to, in those kinds of matches, push our level to be better. At 2-1 and at 2-2, I thought we were really strong in the match. And the question I posed to the team this week, or after the match is why can't we look like that at 0-0 and why can't we find a way to believe in ourselves and play with that kind of confidence and aggression from the start and let teams know that when they come to Elland road that that we're ready to suffocate them, that we're ready to be on top of the match.
Now obviously West Ham has quality, every team has quality so it's not so easy, but we still, in my mind, play a little bit too passive and too safe. So we've got to continue to build that mentality and the tactics of that mentality into what we do.
Wilfried Gnonto scored his first goal for the club on Wednesday, 19 years old, it looks like he's already become a bit of a cult hero at the club. You will come across emerging talent throughout your career, what are your observations about how good he could be?
Yeah, I think what you see is a combination of confidence and belief, that quality. That's usually the young players that have big potential, what you'd like to see. He's been a lot of fun to work with. He takes on information really well, he has flexibility to the way we use them. This game we use Cree a little bit more as the wide player and Willy a little bit more in the interior. He had certain moments where I thought he did really well, certain moments where he is his understanding what that role is and he can continue to grow. But you see confidence in him right now. I think it's a partly about a run of games that he's had and then adapting to the league and adapting to what we are asking of him.
So that part's been good and if we can get Cree fully fit and sharp, we have him, Luis then we have Brenden and Jack and then we start to build, and then obviously with our strikers, a real compliment of attacking players that can be a lot of fun to work with.
Jack Harrison, he came off against Newcastle, substitute against West Ham, is not just you looking at bringing other players into the mix?
Yeah, he's still physically not at 100% so playing him 90 minutes and starting both games from the start, we just made the decision to try to protect him a little bit. But I think Jack’s in a really good place. I think he performed well against Newcastle and he performed really well when he came on into the match a couple nights ago. Jack is a big part of what we're doing here and we need to just get him fully fit so that we can push him back to 100% every way.
You expected Archie Gray to play this season when we spoke in the summer, injuries have just robbed him of that chance so far, but how close is he now?
He's currently ill. I was told he had a really high fever today so he's not here. His injury we feel like we've been very cautious because it's the type of injury that if we aggravated it, at his age, it can cause problems down the down the line. So we've wanted to be cautious and I think the steps we've taken have put him in a good place that he's close to accelerating now getting himself really back on the pitch. Obviously, no one's more frustrated than Archie but he's young.
We have to be patient with him and we like him a lot and we like his mentality but we just want to make sure that we're addressing his physical needs in the right way.
Alfie McCalmont has found himself in a strange situation having been on loan previously and he’s not got that this season. How hopeful are you that he'll get a move to build and play and what's he been like around here?
Alfie has trained really well, he’s played really well in the last six weeks and made the biggest impression on me in his time here so far. So that part's been great.
What exactly the decisions are for loans with different players aren't all clear quite yet. For them they get their season going today, they play at Nottingham tonight. Alfie's been training more often with the first group and doing really well in training in and in the test matches. So I expect him to have another good match tonight. Then I think we'll continue to think about exactly what the path is for him and players in that same category of trying to figure out do we want to send them to get new branches or do we feel like keeping them internal and working on their process here is better.
We spoke briefly about your plans for replacing Mark Jackson at Newcastle. Can you touch on that in more detail about how you want to replace him and who that might be?
We're incredibly close. I don't want to say anything yet. I said last week that I thought we were a couple days away, I'm going to say right now we're a couple of days away. We made the decision and we've had negotiations and we're just kind of trying to iron out all the details so that we can announce it.
Is this week more than ever, going away to Cardiff, the perfect time to give Cody Drameh a chance?
Yeah. So Cody will play some minutes tonight in Nottingham, and then we'll have to address what we need from him, but he'll be in the squad for sure. We'll see exactly how we decide to use him. So, you know, I know it's sort of contradictory what I've been saying, I'm really happy with Cody but then haven’t included him in the squad, but I'm really happy with Cody, really happy and we've got to figure out exactly how to challenge him moving forward as well.
I'm asking this from my English perspective but obviously you've got a more sort of international perspective on it. As the years go by it seems like Champions League qualification is more important, or European qualification or staying in the league, do you feel like the importance of actually winning trophies is being diminished?
It depends on your status as a club, I think. For me, I guess because I've won a lot of trophies, that means a lot to me. It means a lot to me. Now, for me even managing this club and where we are it's a little bit different experience for me as well, because I've been mostly with teams that are on the top side competing for titles, which then changes the mindset of even how you manage. I'm just trying to continue to create a mentality and mindset here that's not just about survival, that's about building that's about a process. But the pressures of this league and where we are as a team mean that that's one of the hardest things to do, to relieve the idea of looking at the table every day, but it's not my focus and it's not my emphasis.
I understand what the realities are for players, for the club, for fans for everything, but really trying to stay in the moment is probably the most important thing and maybe the hardest thing for all of us to do on a daily basis. I think the more that we can actually execute that and stick to a plan and focus on development, I think the better than we can control results and trying to convey that is really important for me.
But in a moment like this, you can't go that you can't go into matches and not say that the results are important because they are, especially in a Cup that's either we win or we’re out, or I guess where we draw, we come back and play, so that's the one variable. In the end, we want to go down there and focus on performance and if we feel like if we do that, then we can have a good chance of winning.
Do cups help in a way because you have no choice but to look forward. There's no question of looking at the results and seeing where you are in the table. So in terms of sort of developing the mindset of this group can it help to take you to different places?
We believe that a cup run can give us momentum, if that's what you're saying. We believe that and even when we chose to play the line-up that we did against Wolves, it wasn't thinking that we were throwing in the towel. Given where we were at that moment we felt to give ourselves the best chance in that tournament, as well as against Tottenham, that was what was necessary. If we would have beaten Tottenham when we were up on them late in the match, even losing to Wolves, I would have thought that we got a lot out of Wolves that we played pretty well. We we're a little bit unlucky to lose that match and then we would have won Tottenham, but it didn't work out that way. But the strategy for this match is certainly with enough break in between to get as many guys prepared to play as possible and then to make sure we have a team that will go after it in every way.
Cardiff are a real bogey team for Leeds, I think they’ve won 14 games against Leeds since they knocked them out of the Cup in 2002. Does that have any psychological bearing?
This is why I think even when we got the draw, we spoke about and we knew this was going to be a difficult draw for us. It's a bit of a long way by English standards, not by American standards.
For me, it's about having a clear mindset and expecting the best from them and being ready for that. It'll be a cup fight and I think our ability to play the way we want to play but to understand exactly the mindset of the opponent will be very important and for us to be ready for a real match absolutely in every way.
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