Leeds need World Cup break to hit reset and attack the restart in late December - The Athletic 28/10/22

By Phil Hay

For those Leeds United players who are not about to find out what winter in Qatar is like, the World Cup break had the sound of the summer about it. First, Jesse Marsch would give them two weeks off. Then, if the administrative pieces of a tour fell into place, they would head to California and a part of the globe where the cold is never too severe.

Leeds and Marsch have been mapping out November and December for a while, anticipating that the English season halting so early and unusually would leave them feeling dormant. What harm in a fortnight away if Leeds don’t play again until after Christmas? If friendlies were necessary, and friendlies will be necessary, then the States was as good a place to play as anywhere else. A few Mexican clubs were offering to provide opposition. Get up to speed, visit the turf of the club’s minority shareholder in San Francisco, a few boxes ticked.

Then came the heat, the burn of poor form, and the luxury of being free and easy while Qatar did its thing dissipated. Here and now, even the start of a six-and-a-half-week break feels disconcertingly distant, with four matches to negotiate before then and Marsch under the cosh. Manchester City at home, the first game back on December 28, might as well be next century. Leeds need this break for the good of their health, and not simply for the purposes of rest and recuperation.

Marsch hinted yesterday that logistical changes were afoot. “We’re modifying our World Cup schedule to think about how we can maximise things, where we’re travelling and training,” he said and The Athletic understands the club now intend to remain in Europe, rather than heading to the US or to other destinations offered to them further abroad. Initial holiday time will also be cut as they try to conjure improved results when the season restarts.

The club had eyes on the interlude before Sunday’s loss to Fulham and they have eyes on it still, determined that Marsch will be head coach when it comes and that wide open space after Tottenham away on November 12 will not automatically be the cue for managerial change. Nobody at Elland Road has been hinting at alternatives to Marsch or shortlists of replacements, save to say that Sean Dyche would not be among them if Marsch was to fall. They are doubling down on their man, reiterating support as the tide turns publicly, but however rigid that confidence, the club’s results and stasis cannot lie unchecked.

After RB Leipzig relieved Marsch of his previous role just under a year ago, the chief executive of Leipzig, Oliver Mitzlaff, said Marsch had spoken to the club more than once before his exit about whether or not they were truly the right fit. Marsch has since said himself that by the end of his time in that job, he no longer thought that he was; that top-level relationships were not smooth and that players, mentally, were reverting to tactics and old habits which were not his. COVID-19 forced him to watch his final few matches from home and he saw a team doing things he was not asking him to do. So the call was Leipzig’s but the acceptance was mutual, with neither side minded to fight the other.

Leeds, as yet, have not suffered that crisis of faith and nor has Marsch intimated that the worries he had about him and Leipzig’s hierarchy failing to land on the same page are creeping in again. It is a difficult dynamic to his present relationship with the club’s support. That he and the crowd, or a large section of it, are at odds is plain to see. Marsch is the embodiment of how people from his home state of Wisconsin are regarded — bright and sunny, oozing positivity, inclined to see the good things in life — but on Sunday, as he went around the Elland Road pitch at full-time, he was vexed and talking to himself, voicing what could only have been turmoil and exasperation. Being on the same page as the club is not the same as being on the same page as those who pay to watch and Marsch, from experience, does not need telling that. This is not his first brush with disharmony.

The club are fortunate in one sense, though. The presence of a weird, unnatural gap in the season — albeit after something similar in September — will save them from the pressure of wading through a glut of fixtures before the turn of the year, of dealing with the mood swings which come with every game. Coaches like to talk about getting back on the horse when results eject them from the saddle but Leeds, more than most other sides in the Premier League, need the breathing space and the thinking space, the chance to act and react without results turning the screw further. Few clubs have as much to resolve as Leeds, or more pressure to make the most of the break. Internally the club are not hiding the fact that they badly need to get there.

.@andrinhopereira the provider, Mitro the finisher. 🔥#FFC pic.twitter.com/fffqygpi4C

— Fulham Football Club (@FulhamFC) October 24, 2022

The upside of the interlude and the length of it is that a change of coach, if Leeds turn that way, need not mean a lurch towards a caretaker or an interim pick, a choice which deals solely with the immediate jeopardy or revolves around who is out of work. A number of the club’s players will go to the World Cup but six empty weeks through November and December is the equivalent of a standard pre-season, enough time to redraw the picture tactically. Then comes January and a transfer window which Leeds have every reason to use. There has probably never been a season where readjusting substantially in the middle of it has been more feasible.

If Leeds press ahead with Marsch, and if the next fortnight does not end in a plan to supplant him, the same necessities apply. They need changes to hoist them out of a start which is not even matching the average needed for last season’s points total of 38. How do they tighten up at set pieces? How do they stop the tendency to bleed in the full-back areas? How can Marsch improve the impact of substitutions in a team who, since their win over Wolves on the first day of the season, have claimed a single point from losing positions and dropped eight from winning positions? If, as Leeds insist, they want to stand by Marsch and help him, how do they do that in practical terms? There would be tweaks to the backroom staff, Marsch revealed yesterday, including greater involvement of a psychologist.

Part of the train of thought at Elland Road mirrors what is being said in some analytical circles — parts of the club’s performance data, if taken without prejudice, show Leeds deserve a higher league position than they currently hold. Good goalscoring opportunities have been wasted — Patrick Bamford is now on a streak of nine big chances, none taken — and they are statistically more dangerous than 11 other Premier League sides. But beyond the stats are the intangibles, like emotion, tension and the rancour of a crowd whose faith has collapsed.

“We think we’re close,” Marsch insisted a week or so ago but that confidence will fall on deaf ears externally for as long as Leeds lie short of wherever they are trying to get. The naked eye has them much further away. “I’m not dumb,” Marsch said. “I understand that if we don’t win games then I put (the board) in a difficult position to support me. I’ve never lost this much in my career. I’m sick of it.”

All Leeds and Marsch can hope is that by the time the World Cup comes, they are not cut adrift, either out of the bottom three or in touch in a way which lets them reset and attack the restart in late December without having to first regain contact with the pack. That is where the season will be won or lost, on the strength and durability of the team who return from the break.

The small matter of City and Haaland will await on the other side of it but the battles that matter lie elsewhere.