Here are the latest Leeds United evening headlines on Tuesday, May 10.
Kalvin Phillips outlines leadership intentions
Following the early curtailment of Luke Ayling’s season, Jesse Marsch is running out of senior players to call upon. Other members of his leadership council – Stuart Dallas, Adam Forshaw, Patrick Bamford and Liam Cooper – have all suffered recent injuries and haven’t been available as much as the Whites boss would have liked.
It leaves Kalvin Phillips as one of the last experienced players left in the line-up but he certainly won’t shirk responsibility in the final three games of the season. He made his leadership intentions clear on Monday evening as he posted an image of him wearing the captain’s armband to both Twitter and Instagram paired with the simple caption of blue and yellow heart emojis.
If Cooper isn’t deemed quite fit enough to feature tomorrow evening, the England midfielder will start the match as Leeds captain. It doesn’t have too much of an effect as Phillips is still one of the leaders in the team regardless of his title, but it will be especially special for him given his lifelong support of the club.
Read more: How the relegation picture could change as Leeds United and Everton prepare for midweek matches
Marsch gives Cooper and Bamford injury updates
Leeds fans will be keeping an eye out for the inclusion of Cooper’s name in the starting XI when the team is announced at 6:30pm tomorrow evening. There was hope he would return for the trip to Arsenal on Sunday but the pain in his knee had not fully cleared.
Marsch confirmed, in his pre-Chelsea press conference, that he hopes to have his skipper back for the visit of Thomas Tuchel’s side. Although, he is still without Bamford as the Leeds striker is not quite up to the required fitness to be involved against his former club.
The good news was that he is due to be back training with the squad towards the end of the week so he could feature in the games against Brighton and Brentford. There were no other changes to report elsewhere in the squad.
Read more here.
Ayling continues to be criticised for Martinelli tackle
Leeds supporters were extremely unhappy with Ayling’s decision to dive in two-footed on Gabriel Martinelli inside half an hour at the Emirates on Sunday. He was initially shown a yellow card but, after VAR consultation, referee Chris Kavanagh rightly gave the 30-year-old his marching orders.
Jamie Carragher slammed Ayling for the tackle on Sky Sports at the time and Garth Crooks has weighed in on the incident. After including Eddie Nketiah in his BBC Sport Team of the Week, the ex-Stoke and Tottenham forward wasn’t much more sympathetic.
“I can only imagine how mindbogglingly stupid Luke Ayling must feel having left his team to play the rest of the game with 10 men after just 27 minutes,” said Crooks. “He stays on the field, Leeds come away with a result.”
Read more here.
