Street fights like Leeds United’s relegation scrap need nous, cunning, granite jaws and a piercing jab. The experience of Jesse Marsch’s leadership council could be badly missing on the field this weekend.
If Liam Cooper is ruled out of Sunday’s Arsenal trip, there will be four of the seven in that top-tier group missing. The armband, as it has done for so much of this second half of the season, will rest with Luke Ayling, the man in the squad so many on the terraces and within the club turn to when the chips are down.
The bigger run-in questions lie in store for Kalvin Phillips and Rodrigo. Just as Marsch felt he was restoring all of his leaders to the field for the most significant stretch of the season, he could be missing more than half of them this weekend.
