One of the very few silver linings of Leeds United’s injury-ridden and all-round underwhelming Premier League campaign was the amount of exposure gained by the club’s young players. A handful of the most promising talents within the Whites squad were on the bench most weekends while others gained plenty of first-team involvement.
Such was the extent of the injury problems at Elland Road, Leeds handed eight league debuts to teenagers, more than ever in a single Premier League season. Those players were Joe Gelhardt, Sam Greenwood, Charlie Cresswell, Crysencio Summerville, Leo Hjelde, Cody Drameh, Lewis Bate and Stuart McKinstry.
Between them, those eight young players played 1,073 minutes of football in the Premier League, meaning Leeds gave more minutes to teenagers than all-but three top-flight sides in the 2021/22 campaign. The only teams to have given more were Southampton (2,222), Manchester United (1,527) and Norwich (1,079).
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According to transfermarkt.co.uk , which calculated Leeds’ teenager minutes as a slightly lower 1,065 minutes, broke the minutes down as follows:
· Joe Gelhardt – 530 mins
· Leo Hjelde – 148 mins
· Lewis Bate – 146 mins
· Charlie Cresswell – 138 mins
· Crysencio Summerville – 69 mins
· Cody Drameh – 19 mins
· Sam Greenwood – 12mins
· Stuart McKinstry – 3 mins
Of course, some of the players on the list –Gelhardt, Greenwood, Summerville and Drameh – gained more league minutes for Leeds than the above list suggests however, as they turned 20 during the season, the minutes after their 20th birthdays are not counted.
If nothing else, the statistic regarding the Whites’ use of young players highlights the strength of Victor Orta’s ongoing youth development project. Cresswell is the only one on the list that solely came through the academy at Thorp Arch as the rest were recruited from elsewhere in England or Scotland.
Like it was last summer, more progress is likely to be made in bringing promising young players to the club this summer. Although, if guarantees are not made regarding regular more game time for some of the aforementioned players, they could look to move in search of a starting berth somewhere else.
