When Jesse Marsch recently joined the employment networking website LinkedIn, speculation that the Leeds manager was about to be sacked and had begun job hunting reached fever pitch. The American was simply hoping to exchange ideas on leadership with “different business people” in “different walks of life”, but the experience highlighted the suspicion many continue to harbour towards the Princeton history graduate.
No one seems quite sure what to make of the academically high-flying son of a tractor factory worker from the United States’ Midwest who has morphed from an aggressive MLS midfield enforcer to an emotionally open Premier League manager.
Even more confusingly, his team are riddled with similarly glaring contradictions. While the 49-year-old is capable of doing a passable impression of a nuanced psychiatrist one minute and a jargon-spouting chief executive of a multinational corporation the next, Leeds are an uneasy amalgam of irrepressible attacking force and chaotic defensive mess.
Their high-intensity, high-tempo counter-pressing style is exhilarating but exhausting and can, at times, leave a vulnerable backline horribly exposed. That was essentially the story of their 5-2 defeat at Brentford in September but, as Thomas Frank’s side head to Elland Road for Sunday’s return, Marsch has reason for cautious optimism.
If a rare goalless draw, at Newcastle on 31 December, proved Leeds can after all slow games down, frustrate opponents and control midfield, Patrick Bamford’s long-awaited return and Willy Gnonto’s exciting emergence suggest this season’s skirmish with the relegation zone could be curtailed.
Gnonto already looks a leading candidate for bargain of the season. The £4m summer buy from FC Zürich has not yet passed his driving test and is taken to training by his father but, at 19, he is a full Italy international.
Gnonto ripped Cardiff to shreds during Wednesday’s 5-2 FA Cup third-round replay at Elland Road. Quite apart from scoring twice, with his first goal an audacious Paolo Di Canio-esque scissor volley, Gnonto combined superbly with Rodrigo and Bamford.
Leeds have struggled throughout the latter’s 18 months on the sidelines but three goals in two appearances suggest the key striker is finally mended. Few Premier League counterparts can rival Bamford’s high-calibre movement.
“I now have an arsenal of attacking weapons,” says the Leeds manager, who may introduce the club’s £35m record signing, the France Under-21 forward Georginio Rutter, from the bench against Brentford.
Marsch certainly needs Bamford, Gnonto, Rodrigo (who Rutter selected as his ideal PlayStation partner) and co as Leeds aims to improve a record of twowins in their past Premier League 15 games. Doing so would silence evidently erroneous reports that he has lost the dressing room.
“Results haven’t been good enough, and I can be criticised for lots of things, so I don’t think anyone needs to invent anything else,” says Marsch before revealing a procession of first-teamers visited his office, stressing solidarity. “The BS reports that some players are against me are awful, just awful. The players came to me wanting to make sure I know, and everyone knows, we’re together. They’re angry. To question the character of what we’ve built here is off base.”
Significantly, Marsch does acknowledge there have been cultural teething problems during the 11 months since he replaced Marcelo Bielsa. “My idea of leadership is very different to Bielsa’s,” he said, addressing the United Soccer Coaches Convention in Philadelphia recently. “He told everybody what to do and they had to do as he said. I’m very structured on the pitch but, in terms of how we interact and relate [off it], I’m very flexible. I don’t believe in hierarchy so I’ve tried to knock all that crap out.
“Early on, our head of performance came to me and said: ‘The guys love what you’re doing.’ And I said: ‘That’s great. But in six months we’re going to have a whole set of new challenges because they’re not going to understand how to handle the freedom of being able to share their opinion but still fit within the standards we’re trying to create.’ Almost to the day, six months later we had an issue within the team of a couple of guys wanting to do something different. Then the head of performance came to me and I looked at my watch and I go: ‘See.’
“I had to say: ‘I appreciate you guys saying what you think. But if you act selfishly I have to respond. We have to hold each other to certain standards.’”
Another five months on, locker-room harmony seems restored and Leeds’s attacking arsenal is primed, but the team’s enduring defensive deficiencies ensure there are still no guarantees he will be around to celebrate his first anniversary in charge on 28 February.
