Injuries were a narrative Leeds United wanted to leave behind them firmly in the past with last season’s 17th place. Yet there is one niggle at risk of spoiling one key player’s pre-season.
Captain Liam Cooper, so influential in the dressing room and on the field down the run-in last term, is struggling with a lingering Achilles issue. The 30-year-old is in a race to see any match time before the season starts.
At the start of the pre-season tour in Australia it became clear Cooper was not training with the main group under Jesse Marsch. The initial hope was the captain might miss the Brisbane Roar and Aston Villa games, but see some action against Crystal Palace before the flight home.
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On Wednesday in Perth, Marsch said: “Liam Cooper is still nursing his Achilles issue which, of all things, he picked up training in the off-season on a treadmill.
“So it's been about a month now and we haven't really been able to get him going, but we're hopeful here in the next days we can get more and more on the pitch."
That prognosis has to make the Palace match a doubt for the skipper and then piles all of the hope onto one last chance against Cagliari a week on Sunday at Elland Road. Cooper felt he was in good condition when he returned for pre-season, but he will know there is no substitute for match minutes.
Robin Koch and Pascal Struijk returned one week earlier than Cooper to Thorp Arch for pre-season and have gone on to rack up hundreds more minutes at the heart of defence. Cooper may be the captain and have Marsch’s trust to do a job, but his place has to be under pressure for that Wolverhampton Wanderers match now.
Even if he gets 45 minutes to an hour against Cagliari, another no-show in Australia on Friday puts him so far behind everyone else when it comes to match sharpness. It’s developing into one of the big calls Marsch is going to have to make in two weeks’ time.
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