Stay up to safeguard takeover
The long-mooted takeover with San Francisco-based 49er Enterprises buying out Andrea Radrizzani could well hinge on Leeds’s top-tier survival. The 49er group has an option to increase its 44% stake by early next year, but the deal would almost certainly be placed in jeopardy by a fall into the Championship. Radrizzani has acknowledged he lacks the funds to challenge for Europe and repair the crumbling, extremely dated Elland Road stadium.
Reintroduce an element of width
Jesse Marsch’s sides were invariably constructed in the narrow formations that fitted the American’s pressing philosophy. The downside, quite apart from reducing the supply of goal-creating crosses, was that the counterpress no longer worked properly once his team fell behind. Opponents increasingly tended to defend deep and cede possession to Leeds in areas where they struggled to do any real damage. With wide forwards of the promise of Wilfried Gnonto, Georginio Rutter, Luis Sinisterra, Crysencio Summerville and Jack Harrison, it seems an awful waste of talent to try to turn this team into wingless wonders.
Consider a switch to a back three
A big reason why Leeds are embroiled in a relegation fight centres on their appalling defensive record. A back three, perhaps featuring Max Wöber or Pascal Struijk in the central, sweeping role may afford increased stability. Junior Firpo has long been a weak link at left-back, but at Real Betis and Barcelona he always looked much better at left wing-back. Rasmus Kristensen, too, seems more suited to the right wing-back role, a position where he once excelled for Denmark’s Midtjylland. Why not give 3-4-3 or 3-5-2 a whirl?
Find a role for Michael Skubala
Skubala ended up in charge after Marsch was sacked with his promotion from the under‑21s. First-teamers were immediately impressed by the communication skills of the 40-year-old former PE teacher, most notably his ability to distil complex tactical ideas into simple, easy-to-comprehend instructions. Skubala has taken an unconventional route to the Premier League, but after serving as Loughborough University’s football director, working as a Uefa technocrat, managing the England futsal team and enjoying a stint as England under-18 men’s head coach, he possesses the breadth of vision, and slightly left-field thinking, that enables him to challenge received wisdoms. Skubala could prove invaluable support to Javi Gracia, perhaps even as the No 2. Crucially, he has in-depth knowledge of the talent emerging from the exciting academy.
Keep Bamford happy – and fit
Rodrigo, a real Marsch favourite, has done well for Leeds this season, scoring 10 goals in 19 Premier League appearances, but he is a striker better suited to a deeper-lying role and is sidelined by an ankle injury that could take another two months to heal. The good news is that after 18 months of injury woe Patrick Bamford is finally restored to full fitness and back in his old No 9 position. Bamford’s wonderful movement and goalscoring ability bodes well for Leeds, but given those injury problems he needs not so much wrapping as swaddling in cotton wool. It is also important for the new manager to bond with a highly intelligent striker who, although extremely well-mannered and hard-working, possesses a spiky edge that, earlier in his career, prefaced fallouts with Sean Dyche and Alan Pardew. In some ways, Bamford appears a bit like Gareth Southgate, the player – ostensibly very well-behaved but very much his own man with a latent subversive streak prone to emerging, subtly, in certain circumstances. Tellingly, Bamford clearly understood the power of his rather pointed subtext when, after the defeat at Nottingham Forest that proved to be Marsch’s last game in charge, he, politely, deconstructed the gameplan. “We needed more runners running past me to drag Forest’s centre-backs out of position and create a bit more space,” he said. “The whole game was literally two v one, which made it difficult and, unfortunately, I couldn’t find the answers to solve that.” Gracia would be wise to reconstruct Leeds around the striker.
Do not become a slave to pressing
For an enchanted period Marcelo Bielsa transformed Leeds into a thrilling, highly energetic, pressing team who left fans awestruck, opponents overwhelmed and rival coaches mentally shattered. Sustaining this nirvana was too much for an increasingly burnt-out squad and when Marsch attempted to tweak Bielsa’s blueprint, tactical chaos beckoned. All too often in recent months Leeds have lacked much semblance of midfield control and failed to protect a defence probably not good enough to hold such a high-pressing, high-risk line. Modifications seem called for. Surely Leeds do not always need to swarm forward quite so manically. They could also do with acquiring the art of sometimes slowing games down through smart short passing. A more measured approach could be combined with pressing in the right places at the appropriate moments, but Gracia still does not need to become a slave to philosophy. Victor Orta, Leeds’s director of football, seemed fixated on recruiting another high priest of the hard press, but no tactical template should be set in stone.
