Errors need to be cut out by a Leeds United team conceding too many goals, but not only in defence and goalkeeper. Rodrigo, who has contributed more goals than anyone to the Whites’ cause this term, places those concessions at his feet and the midfielders’ too.
Only Erling Haaland, Harry Kane and Ivan Toney have scored more in the Premier League than Rodrigo this season. United’s 15th-place position would be a hefty sight worse without his penalty-box finishing.
The Spain international’s two strikes against Tottenham Hotspur, in the club’s last competitive fixture, followed by a capitulation from 3-2 to 4-3 down sum up the problems being addressed. Rodrigo, not selected for World Cup duty, has not missed a beat of Jesse Marsch’s mid-season programme up to now.
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His instinctive finishing was visible first-hand as the club went through a five-day long training camp in Spain last week. The 31-year-old said it was a training camp central to eradicating those big issues before the Manchester City behemoth rolls into town.
“We will face probably the best team in the world at this moment,” he said. “[The] first game when we’re back.
“Maybe we are conceding too many goals, but this is not a question about defenders or the ‘keeper. It’s about the whole team because we all defend, we all attack and so we have to try to see these kinds of errors we are all making and try to correct them for the next part of the season.
“The team, in most of the games, played well. It’s true, sometimes, we were beaten by the opponent.
“We didn't play better than them, but for the most part of the games of the season, we played well. Maybe we deserve a bit more than we have now, but that's football, that's what we have and that's what we have to change to be better in the next part.”
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