Left-back has long been a problem position at Leeds United. For years, even before the current administration, highly-anticipated solutions have fallen flat. There is just something about that corner of the field in Leeds white.
Makeshift options like Stuart Dallas and Ezgjan Alioski have had the most success there in recent seasons. More natural choices like Junior Firpo and Barry Douglas have not found the form or fitness to really hold down that shirt.
Max Wober now arrives with plenty of versatility to offer. Dispatches from Austria, Netherlands and Spain would suggest he is a natural centre-back with the ability to move left or forward into midfield.
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Sunday’s debut was a brief, but promising, example of his quality in midfield, but the long-term expectation is Wober spends time at left-back. While he may not be the agile, quick, attacking, mobile, inexhaustible full-back you so often see in the modern game, Jesse Marsch is confident a change in United’s system will suit him in that role.
“The way we play now, we use our left-back often in build-up as a centre-back,” he said. “Max can play a pure left-back. He did that at Sevilla, he did it some at Ajax, he did it some at Salzburg, he's done it for the national team.
“It's still in his wheelhouse. He's not a pure up-and-down left-back, but we've been rotating more one of our attacking players out to play open on the wing a little and have our left-back be more of a three build-up or in the backline and part of the build-up.”
As Pascal Struijk has sometimes shown, he can tuck in alongside Liam Cooper and Robin Koch while Rasmus Kristensen or Luke Ayling raid down the right flank. It’s also a telling change in the attacking third.
One of the most notable facets of Marsch’s side has been the narrow width in attack. Frequently, the widest forwards will be within the width of the penalty box in one of the starkest changes to the team since Marcelo Bielsa, who wanted chalk on his winger’s boots, left.
Crysencio Summerville’s recent deployment as a left-sided central midfielder out of possession and a more natural winger in possession, has underlined why Marsch feels Wober will work at left-back.
“We had him (Summerville) in the midfield (versus West Ham United) a little bit when we were against the ball and then we rotated him out wide to be like a winger position with the ball,” he said.
“We do that with a few different guys and we have a different way of rotating our 4-3-3: when we go with four in the back, when we go with three in the back in build-up and then what the roles are.”
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