In the Press

Leeds United news here, transfer rumours, club affairs, players, fans, etc.
Specific match discussions should go in the category below.
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SCOTTISH LEEDS
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Re: In the Press

Post by SCOTTISH LEEDS »

Jon Howe's leeds live article:-

Contrary to popular belief, Leeds United did achieve something last season. It might not appear in the record books, but it could still result in a tangible improvement in the welfare of this weathered football club.

After several years of divisive ownership and a fanbase bickering over complex issues containing several layers of nuance as if they were binary decisions as simple as whether the Elland Road grass was green or not, everyone seemed to agree on something. Two things in fact. Everyone wanted Marcelo Bielsa to stay on as head coach, and nobody thinks we should sell Kalvin Phillips.

One is not just in addition to the other, it is because of it. Undoubtedly, the astonishing improvement in Phillips’s performance is down to the quality of Bielsa’s coaching and the transformational change undertaken last summer, which saw Phillips perform as if he had time-travelled back from the future. We were watching a player who was displaying three years’ worth of development achieved in less than three months.

Phillips will one day look back at that pre-season period from 12 months ago as the most intensely productive summer of his life, one he doubtless entered into tormented with anxiety, but came out of with the belief and confidence of a seasoned Italian international with the world at his feet, let’s say, for example, Andrea Pirlo.

Let’s be honest, few would have argued, nor been surprised, had Phillips been discarded in Bielsa’s ruthless audit of the odds and ends as Leeds United prepared for yet another garage sale. Particularly as this was based on Bielsa’s infamous video marathon of the 2017/18 season, in which Phillips was no worse than anyone else, but cut a frustrating figure, tainted by wastefulness and a general bafflement as to what his key attributes were or what his best position was.

Indeed, here lies the source of several life-draining hours of circular arguments on social media, with many people writing Phillips off at a stroke, while others saw a young, likeable, local player with promise, who just needed some guidance. Recent history is littered with similar stories, and while careers hang on a knife-edge and Leeds United search frantically for a strategy of any kind, it is easy to see why fans view players as throwaway commodities.

That is where Kalvin Phillips was 12 months ago, and yet here we are, united in a belief he is central to the progress Leeds United has made and is now vital to anything being achieved next season.

Bielsa re-modelled Phillips’s game, identifying key attributes which could be improved and others which were no longer necessary. In placing Phillips in front of the back four, and sometimes within the defensive back-line itself, a monster was created. Bielsa chiselled away at lumpen raw material during long, covert days and nights at Thorp Arch and finally revealed his creation, a masterpiece of composure, vision, strength and authority. Phillips was the perfect tool with which to implement Bielsa’s template pressing game, but also provided cover for the back four and a conduit through which a considered and precise passing game was started from the back.

That Leeds were so clinical, efficient and effective in those glorious early games, was largely down to the control Phillips exerted. And like any paternal relationship between a master and his star pupil, Bielsa’s chastisement of Phillips was often brutal and often public, but it didn’t hide the mutual respect and appreciation, and the fact Phillips was this team’s most important player.

So where does that leave us now the promotion dream has departed and we’re awake, grouchy and very much bereft? For once, the Leeds United fanbase seems realistic the only thing certain about life in the Championship, is we have to sell someone to survive, but then what is your definition of ‘survival?’ Having been on the continual cycle of selling our finest young talent for the best part of 15 years, it doesn’t take a genius to conclude that method isn’t necessarily working. So how do you convince a young player to stay? The draw of being ‘Leeds United’ isn’t enough, and while I remain unconvinced the likes of Aaron Lennon, Fabian Delph, Jonny Howson, Sam Byram, Lewis Cook or Ronaldo Vieira actually wanted to leave Leeds, the financial temptations for player, agent and club are almost impossible to resist.

The key difference now, is on all those previous occasions, the player had developed far further and faster than the football club. In most cases, you couldn’t deny them a shot at a higher level, even if their historic roots and their families wanted them to help Leeds United out of this eternal, godforsaken rut. Phillips will be similarly conflicted now, but at least he can see a football club making progress.

I often walk my dog on Wortley Rec, a vast expanse of greenery amid a deep concentration of housing and industrial estates where Kalvin Phillips grew up. Four football pitches and one rugby pitch offer a place of escape and a glorious uninterrupted view of Elland Road and the valley it sits in. Flanked by the hills of Beeston behind it, Elland Road looks small and you feel big, like this is your kingdom and all this could be yours.

Kalvin Phillips will have stood and played there and gazed at Elland Road as a youngster on Leeds United’s books and felt like “all this could be mine”. Things like that don’t leave you, particularly when it is more achievable than ever.

Rumours over the weekend suggest Phillips is prepared to give it one more season at Leeds United. Meanwhile, the Wortley-wide web, a network of local people where everyone seems to know someone who has a connection to Kalvin Phillips, not surprisingly offers contradictory hearsay and grapevine tittle tattle. The truth is nobody knows, not Phillips himself, not Andrea Radrizzani, not even the checkout operative at Aldi (yes, I did once queue up behind Kalvin Phillips in our local Aldi).

If Leeds receive a suitable offer for Phillips it would be a PR disaster to sell him, but that is territory the club don’t appear to be afraid of. Perhaps the saving grace this time, is the club for once have other assets to sell, and you also suspect keeping Phillips was a major bargaining tool in the negotiations to convince Bielsa to stay.

When Neil Redfearn’s famous quartet of Sam Byram, Lewis Cook, Charlie Taylor and Alex Mowatt broke through, Phillips was the Fifth Beatle everyone forgot. And yet, he could and should have the most impact in a white shirt out of all of them. Arguably, he already has.

Keeping Phillips would be a landmark achievement, a statement to confirm Leeds United are not going to unilaterally dismantle everything that made them good. A suggestion, maybe, they have learnt a lesson from the past and have committed to breaking away from the failing blueprint of tedious repetition.

So as we approach Leeds United’s centenary, not selling Kalvin Phillips could be the surest sign yet a sea change is coming, a statement, when they say “we aim to build on last season”, they actually mean it. Leeds United RIP. Welcome to the new Leeds United.
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Re: In the Press

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Beautiful :clap:
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Selby White
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Re: In the Press

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:thumbup: Excellent read
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Re: In the Press

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Selby White wrote::thumbup: Excellent read
Spot on too :thumbup:
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Re: In the Press

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Re: In the Press

Post by phil62 »

Phillips will rightly give it one more season at ER. If he chooses to go after glorious failure next year then he is quite entitled to do so. He was definitely the most transformed player last year. It is looking like Clarke will be the sacrificial lamb (correct decision if it means bringing in 2 x 8-10m players). It has to be this year or Bielsa will be off and we will be languishing in the Championship for the foreseeable future.
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Re: In the Press

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Jon Howe's weekly LeedsLive piece:-

When Howard Wilkinson addressed the massed throng gathered before the Town Hall on a glorious Spring Sunday in May 1992, he touched on a fundamental enigma that has consumed every coach football has ever employed, celebrated, chewed up or spat out. The newly crowned best manager in the country was asked how he was going to approach the next season, and he replied “well, I guess we’re going to have to go and win it again."

Okay, we’ve already been told Leeds United are primed and ready to go again for the upcoming 2019/20 season, and ignoring for a moment how Wilkinson’s Leeds delivered the most shambolic title defence in modern history, but finding that motivating factor is hard enough when you've actually achieved something already. It should be easier when you still have something to prove, of course, but Leeds United are living testament to the adage that ‘striving to go one better’ requires an end product, otherwise it is just fluff and bluster, and Leeds fans have heard enough of that to last a lifetime. So how do you aim to repeat the unique impact of something, when that ‘something’ wasn’t quite enough last time?

Many of us might still have the tin hat on from mid-May and are only just emerging from the wreckage and blinking furiously in the harsh light, but this Monday the players are back in for pre-season training. Yeah, get used to it because it’s all starting again: bibs, bleep tests, triple sessions and wondering why the hell we only ever seem to have half a squad.

Twelve months ago the Leeds United players were in a world of confusion. Some of them were about to be told they had no future at the club, some of them already knew, the rest were about to enjoy the ride of a lifetime. They say there is nothing quite like pre-season for a footballer, but Marcelo Bielsa arrived with a folkloric reputation for an exacting regime that took intensity to another level.

Essentially the players waved goodbye to their families and any semblance of indulgent living for three weeks of brutal conditioning which could barely be described as sensible. With more drills than B&Q, more bleeps than an Aphex Twin gig and more body fat on Mel Sterland’s shin pads, this was hardcore shaping up or shipping out. There was no room for passengers and ritual pitch-side vomiting was the order of the day, when your lungs were about to burst and you had seen the whites of the eyes of physical exhaustion.

That was an introduction to Marcelo Bielsa and something you wouldn’t forget, but would you fancy doing it again? The impact Bielsa had 12 months ago might still go down as one of the most significant periods in the club’s modern history, it all depends what happens from here. The key is, can this pre-season have the same impact as the last one?

We all saw the dramatic improvement in the likes of Liam Cooper, Kalvin Phillips, Mateusz Klich and Kemar Roofe straight away, you could see it physically and mentally in their performances, but can they improve again? Can they even maintain the standards from last season? It is true Bielsa has faced this second season conundrum before, and is wise enough to know the constraints of the players he is working with and will therefore tailor his pre-season programme accordingly, but the intensity of the impact Leeds made in statement performances against Stoke City, Derby County and Norwich City last August came in the surprise factor. How do you replicate that second time around?

Of course, Thorp Arch is more accommodating now, following improvements Bielsa insisted on. Whether they want to or not, the players can effectively live there between morning, afternoon and evening sessions, which creates the kind of continuity and fosters the family unit that was perhaps harder to establish last year. Also, the personalised video analysis issued to each player will be easier for Bielsa’s team to put together, and based on real-time knowledge of performances soaked in their own methods. Given the technical background information Bielsa is famed for bathing in, it is natural that should become more practical and productive the more he knows and understands about the players.

That should also lead on to the fact the squad is more settled and there are fewer decisions to be made. While there are still key holes to be filled and players to be shipped out, I would expect under-23 starlets such as Robbie Gotts, Mateusz Bogusz, Leif Davis, Ryan Edmondson and Jordan Stevens to be fully integrated into the first team squad from the off, which again, brings familiarity, cohesion and an understanding of Bielsa’s methods.

Bielsa has even allowed the indulgence of a pre-season tour to Australia this time around, with hours spent travelling which a year ago would have been better spent holding an hour long debate on Matthew Pennington’s handling of Atdhe Nuhiu at a snow-bound Elland Road. Perhaps this is Bielsa’s one concession to the commercial necessities of running a football club like Leeds United, and doubtless the players won’t be watching the Killing Eve box-set on their iPads, but a WhatsApp-delivered dissection of what on earth happened against Wigan Athletic and Derby County. Nevertheless, Bielsa has changed his methods from a year ago, though you suspect that will be the only one.

There will still be endless repetition, there will still be daily weigh-ins with zero tolerance, there will still be an obsession with standards becoming natural, but will the players be as fixated with meeting those standards as they were before? Will there be that same desire to better themselves? It will be difficult to match the impact of last season, and the more you consider it, the more you believe that same impact can only come from quality signings.

For his part, Bielsa will surely produce something from his vast canon of wisdom and scripture to ensure these same players are as motivated as they were 12 months ago. He will produce something similar to the litter-picking exercise of last summer and he will speak to the players about the club’s history, the fans, the expectation and how they should have empathy for the common man. He knows much more about Leeds United, the scrutiny he and the club are under, he knows English football and its media and administrators, and he knows the current state of society in this country he now calls home.

A Bielsa team has to have impact, there is nothing half-hearted that can be tolerated. So he has to do something biblical. We may only see it away at Bristol City, we may only hear about it in December or at the end of the season, but there will be something. And we will talk about it and remember it and wish we could have been there, because it might just change our lives.
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Re: In the Press

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Winner of the Europa League
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Re: In the Press

Post by SCOTTISH LEEDS »

NottinghamWhite wrote:https://www.expressandstar.com/sport/20 ... larke/

Sniffer has his say ;)
Good read.
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Re: In the Press

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NottinghamWhite wrote:https://www.expressandstar.com/sport/20 ... larke/

Sniffer has his say ;)
He says 'you can't teach a striker to score'. How true is that. Its a natural talent. In the half-second you have, when you get the ball in the penalty area, you know instinctively where to put it to score. Unfortunately, the strikers we have don't have that natural talent. The 'half-second' usually results in a shot or header going straight at the goalkeeper, or wide, or over the bar.
I once played against Don Revie.
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