Everton will always mean something to Adam Forshaw. The Liverpudlian may be an avowed Red, but the blue side of the city will always be where he started his football career.
It’s nearly 11 years since the 31-year-old left Goodison Park and he’s spent more than six of those at Elland Road. Forshaw has spent more time with Leeds than any other club in his senior career and yet his 84 appearances still can’t compete with the games he played at Brentford and Middlesbrough in far shorter spells.
It’s a comparison which sums up Forshaw’s time at Elland Road. The midfielder has been beset by injury problems and, once again, he’s facing a race against time to earn a contract extension.
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Everton, Forshaw’s first home, were ironically the visitors on a monumental day in his career last season. Having failed to kick a ball through the entirety of 2020/21, Forshaw finally made his comeback in a Whites squad when the Toffees arrived at Elland Road for the second game of last season.
Marcelo Bielsa may not have played him, but it was a major step forward for Forshaw who, at that point, had 10 months to run on the contract he signed in January 2018. He had started six of the 89 matches across the previous two campaigns and he knew he had to prove his worth for any chance of new terms from Victor Orta.
There were tentative baby steps in EFL Cup starts against Crewe Alexandra and Arsenal before Premier League cameos from the bench. November 7, 2021 would see Forshaw start a top-flight game for the first time since May 2017.
That November start against Leicester was majestic. Forshaw ran the game, left Bielsa virtually speechless and he would go on to start the next nine league games on the bounce.
A new one-year contract from Leeds would arrive before he even played the ninth match in that sequence. Crucially, the club inserted an option to trigger a 12-month extension in June 2023 at their discretion.
If Forshaw could stay fit and firing, as he did through the end of 2021, there would be no excuse for the Whites not to keep the number four in the building. There would be a late blip though.
Forshaw missed the final seven matches of last season. He returned to the fore in the early weeks of this term under Jesse Marsch, though Tyler Adams and Marc Roca kept him planted to the bench in the main.
Injury would eventually strike again before Leeds hosted Aston Villa on October 2. Forshaw was not in any of the final nine matchday squads before the World Cup break.
A timely return for the Manchester City match on December 28 was welcomed in Tyler Adams’s absence, but his slight limp from the field at half-time in the New Year’s Eve Newcastle United visit was the last time we saw Forshaw. He’s now back where he was last season: fighting for his United future.
Unfortunately, he is yet to be available to Javi Gracia, who is unlikely to ever reveal when the midfielder may show up again, such is his opposition to injury updates. Forshaw has 15 matches between him and the expiry of his contract.
Since the start of Bielsa’s reign, in August 2018, Forshaw has started 49 of United’s 213 games. That’s 23 per cent and less than one start for every four matches. Take the club’s 162 games since August 2019 and Forshaw’s percentage drops to 17 per cent, with 28 starts in that time.
It’s been a rough ride for Forshaw, a trusted, valued, experienced and intelligent voice in the dressing room. He needs to get fit, get playing and impress or Orta and the board face an unpleasant debate in the summer.
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