Change is fast in football
Thirteen days earlier there had been a resignation in the Elland Road air Jesse Marsch’s time may finally be up at Leeds United. A Rodrigo opener against newly-promoted Fulham would give way to a 3-1 onslaught which added the rotten cherry to the eight-match cake baked with no wins.
The system was not working, showing no signs of improvement nor any resilience to the most basic opposition attacks. Exciting performances under Marsch since February could be counted on two fingers and many walked away from LS11 on October 23 firmly expecting the corner-flag club statement.
Fast-forward less than two weeks and Rodrigo was again scoring the opener at Elland Road, Leeds were again capitulating to a 3-1 deficit against newly-promoted opposition they had to beat. Except, this time, Marsch’s Leeds, led by a band of fearless youths, would find a way to fight back and fight on under their American boss.
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Within the space of a fortnight, Marsch has gone from the top of the sack race to the head coach of a club sat 12th in the Premier League with a better record than David Moyes, Brendan Rodgers or Frank Lampard. They have gone from relegation fodder to opening up five points on the bottom two with a game in hand.
If, on August 1, you were told Leeds would sit 12th after 13 matches with 15 points, you would have snapped their hand off. If someone had missed all of United’s games this season, but saw their record on paper, they would not dream of thinking Marsch was under threat.
And yet that’s the problem. We have seen the matches and we know, while the game was enthralling and the three points critical, long spells of Saturday were a hard watch from the Leeds perspective.
Bournemouth should be dispatched without the need to detour to a 3-1 deficit before scraping back to win by the skin of Leeds teeth. They made hard work of what should have been a regulation win at 1-0 inside two minutes.
As Marsch would admit himself, if consistency is proving a problem then belief and willpower certainly is not. The team continues to fight for Marsch and delivered an unforgettable comeback on Saturday.
That’s back-to-back wins for the first time since mid-March and only the third time since the start of last term. The team and Marsch must hope, if they can keep getting by with the odd close scrape here and there, in the longer term the performances and reliability will follow.
The Gnonto die is cast
Charles De Ketelaere. Cody Gakpo. Martin Terrier. Arnaud Kalimuendo. Wilfried Gnonto. After a summer of speculation and pursuit, it was hard to come away from September 1’s transfer deadline without a sense of disappointment.
Leeds went into deadline day with Victor Orta in Eindhoven trying to finalise a transfer for the forward who would go on to rock European football this season. They would end it with Daniel James waiting for hours to confirm his Fulham loan while they frantically tried to pick up the pieces with the one forward they could get over the line at short notice.
United would end the day with an experienced Wales international winger effectively traded for an 18-year-old from the Swiss top flight Marsch considered unprepared for Premier League football. There is a delicious irony in that teenager now proving the spark capable of turning this campaign around.
In the hour or so he has had on the field, he has shown the ability to be a threat for Leeds. The flashes of calm, calculated brilliance at Anfield blossomed into a terrorising second-half turn at Elland Road against Bournemouth, complete with a match-winning assist.
The dribble and pass deserved to win any game. The strength, speed, balance and stamina of the carry before the perfectly-weighted slide into Crysencio Summerville’s unbroken run was exquisite.
Throughout United’s winless eight-match streak it became harder and harder for supporters to fathom why an Italy international was being left in the cold when the team so evidently needed change. Marsch has been patient with Gnonto, but even after just two substitute appearances it’s suddenly become very hard to keep him out of the starting line-up.
Gnonto’s rise has coincided with a recent slump in Jack Harrison’s form. The concerns of Anfield only grew larger against Bournemouth. While a final product has often been a frustration with Harrison, even his physical traits, like acceleration, endurance and agility, seem to have abandoned him of late.
The winger went into a spiral with his decision-making. Every time he made the wrong call he tried harder to make up for it, but in trying too hard his execution waned even further from his naturally high level.
Midweek in Molineux may give Marsch more food for thought, but the chance to recharge Harrison while unleashing Gnonto at Tottenham Hotspur must be tantalising for the head coach.
The kids are alright
The average age of the four forwards who finished Saturday’s game in white was 20-years-old. Much has been made of the youth policy in the transfer market at Elland Road and this Bournemouth win was one of those days the stars aligned.
Summerville looks nothing like the hesitant, isolated, overawed debutant we saw at Leicester City last month. Match by match, goal by goal, the number 10 has come out of his shell and his confidence is booming.
After a week full of headlines, questions and answers from Marsch dominated by the Liverpool match-winner, Summerville was not fazed in the slightest and picked up where he left off. After winning the penalty inside 55 seconds, he continued to look a threat in the open, even contributing in defence when Bournemouth countered.
The real moment to deliver came as a result of Gnonto’s own brilliance at the death and given how he has played in the last few games, you never doubted Summerville would stick that winner away. Less certain was Sam Greenwood’s impact.
The former Arsenal man’s Leeds high point came on the final day of last season when he pulled the strings from midfield on a day which kept the club in the Premier League. The 20-year-old has had to bide his time this term and his one league start was a disappointment against Fulham last month.
However, Greenwood turned the game yesterday. A moment of quality with his left boot broke the Bournemouth resistance and showed Leeds the way before an accurate corner was hung up at the far post for Liam Cooper to head level.
Marsch was under real pressure at 3-1 down. The kids dug him out of a hole on Saturday.
Bamford approaches an unwanted anniversary
Marsch could barely hide his pained grin at the ridiculousness of the latest injury Patrick Bamford is coping with. Something cropped up in his hip area when he took the last penalty kick in the last training session before the match.
It’s the latest in a long line of issues which now stretch back to that fateful night at Newcastle United in September 2021, when Marcelo Bielsa asked him to play through the pain barrier. In the 415 days since that match, Bamford has been unable to string more than two starts together at a time and failed to complete 90 minutes in any outing.
If the striker does not score against Wolverhampton Wanderers or Spurs next week, the one-year anniversary of his last competitive goal will come and go during the World Cup break. The passing of a calendar year without a goal for a forward with England aspirations just sums up how wretched this striker issue has become at Elland Road.
Angus Kinnear’s ‘warm bodies’ column looks more and more poorly timed as the weeks of this season go by.
Carabao plans
Signing off from Elland Road until after Christmas with a win sets the table for two final away matches before the long-awaited World Cup pause. A midweek trip to Molineux in the EFL Cup does not seem a particularly welcome venture for many, but it does provoke some intrigue.
With only four expected injury absentees, Marsch has a large number of players in need of minutes, but also a starting line-up with its first sign of momentum since the end of August. Gnonto could get the chance to cement his claim for a league start, while Greenwood, Junior Firpo, Luke Ayling, Gelhardt, Mateusz Klich and Diego Llorente all need to keep their engines ticking over.
Given Illan Meslier played in the last round, he should continue in the West Midlands. Cooper’s brittle injury record should mean he drops out with Rasmus Kristensen and Pascal Struijk to make way for Ayling, Llorente and Firpo.
Tyler Adams’s recent rest against Fulham may mean he keeps his spot alongside Greenwood in the centre. Summerville’s age and generally limited minutes this season could mean Marsch keeps his in-form motor running, while Klich and Gnonto look like obvious replacements for Brenden Aaronson and Harrison.
Gelhardt for Rodrigo seems to make a lot of sense too.
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