Max Wober was barely through the Leeds United door when Jesse Marsch issued his first challenge to him. The American knows Wober well from their time at Red Bull Salzburg together and he knows the impact he can make by asserting himself and making his voice heard.
He certainly made his presence felt on his debut at Cardiff City, arriving into the action in the second half and helping Leeds come from two goals down to secure a replay against the Bluebirds at Elland Road. Wober settled things down against Aston Villa, too, on what was his Premier League bow, arriving in the game after seeing Leeds go two down and bringing composure.
Ultimately, despite Leeds turning in what Marsch described as the ‘most complete performance of his tenure’, Wober couldn’t repeat the trick and help to pull the Whites back to level pegging at Villa Park. The Austrian has made an encouraging start to life in West Yorkshire, though, and he’ll have his eyes on a full debut over the next week or so, either in the FA Cup or against Brentford next weekend in the Premier League.
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Marsch is pleased with what he has seen from the 24-year-old so far and he’s predicting him to have a constructive role within the group moving forward.
“Firstly, from a personality perspective, it's never easy to come into a new team,” Marsch said. “I think that this team has strong personalities, but I challenged Max to not be passive in the way that he asserts himself.
“I told him he doesn't have to run around and tell everybody what to do, but I know that one of his main strengths is how vocal he is on the pitch, how clear and intelligent he is on the pitch and how fearless he is.”
He added: “I think I want to figure out a way to help incorporate Max quickly because I think he can be part of us moving forward in a positive manner. But I also know that we're getting a lot of other guys too and I want to make sure that I get that balance right and I set Max up to succeed and I set the team up to succeed as well.
“I think that even when you look at the fixture list coming up, you can see that we have a lot of matches and we're going have to get the balance right of who to play when. Ideally like against Cardiff I wouldn't want to make so much of a rotation in the squad but given where we were with a few injury situations, we needed a few more days for guys to get back to 100%.
“So it worked out that way. But my goal will be in the future to not have some big rotation and just to make a few positions here and there or sometimes go match to match with the same group.”
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