Roughly, Wilfried Gnonto had two weeks in training with Leeds United to go from the teenager Jesse Marsch considered unready to ousting golden boy Joe Gelhardt. This is less about Gelhardt, whose own reputation as a future star remains intact, and more about the staggering rise of the Italian.
Marsch had gone some way to illustrating Gnonto’s progress in Friday’s press conference, but the impression the 18-year-old’s made only landed when it became clear he was preferred to a fully-fit Gelhardt. The Liverpudlian was seen working with fitness coach Pierre Barrieu on the pitch pre-match yesterday and the assumption had been it was some kind of late fitness test.
Once Marsch clarified it was simply training drills to keep his legs sharp, the penny dropped on a tentative pecking order. The head coach has never ducked a question since arriving and could not hide from the fact, while Gelhardt was still impressing, Gnonto’s selection did form a hierarchy of sorts.
