Sam Byram: ‘I regret not going up with Leeds – this is my second chance to do it’ — The Athletic 20/11/23
By Phil Hay
There is very little not to like about Sam Byram, apart from
the fact that the ageing process does not seem to apply to him. He was 30 in
September but hardly looks a day older than the afternoon at Farsley when, as a
debutant and unheralded teenager, even his manager at Leeds United did not
really know who he was.
But his body has felt the passing of the years and the
timing of The Athletic’s interview with him demonstrates that. We’re speaking
on a Thursday evening, before a game between Leeds and Plymouth Argyle. Two
days later, Byram pulls a hamstring in the second half of that match. Leeds are
at pains to stress that the injury is unrelated to the chronic problem he
experienced four years ago, only a minor strain, but the little setback is
indicative of Byram’s time of life.
Managing the hamstring he ruptured at Norwich City led him
to invest in a pilates machine, a contraption with springs which is now part of
the stack of gear Leeds’ kit staff take with them home and away. They can be
seen lugging it into stadiums on matchdays. “It’s a bit of a running joke here,
whenever I’m on it,” Byram says. “I’m religious with it. I’ll do it every day
before training and sometimes after. I do it before matches. It helps and it
makes me feel better.”
More than once, he describes himself as having a “poor
injury record” and it was that which contributed to him finding himself without
a contract or a club for the first time in his adult life in the summer. His
availability, though, was what encouraged Leeds to go back to a player they had
nurtured in their academy a decade earlier, a defender who made his debut for
them in 2012. Byram realised that some in the sport would regard him as damaged
goods, but his return to Elland Road on a free transfer in August gave Leeds
the most competent left-back they have had in a long time.
It all started with a text from one of Daniel Farke’s
coaching team, a speculative message asking what an unattached Byram was up to.
That moment of contact has given him a new lease of life and a second bite at
something he wanted from Leeds the first time around: promotion to the Premier
League with the club who made him.
Based on his ability and technique, Byram was too good a
footballer to be unintentionally out of contract at the age of 29. He built a
reputation as a rangy, flowing full-back who could defend and attack with equal
nous and Leeds have discovered over the past few months that neither part of
his game has left him. As free transfers go, he has been a clever recruit.
But he is not inclined to sugarcoat the extent of his injury
history. At Norwich, he missed almost two full years with a damaged hamstring
which stubbornly refused to heal. When the recent summer transfer window came
and Norwich released him, he did not expect to be flooded with enquiries. For
one thing, he was not told about Norwich’s intention to let him go until the
final week of last season. “They left it very late,” he says, “and not just
with me. It was a strange period because I didn’t know where I stood. So yeah,
that was definitely a first.”
How did it feel, the stark reality of being without a club?
“Now that I’m sat here, playing at Leeds under a manager I know and playing
frequently, it’s easy to say I was never worried,” he says. “But if I’m honest,
thinking back to when I didn’t know what I’d be doing this year, it was a bit
of a troubling time — one where you’ve got to keep the faith and hope that
something crops up.
“I’ve played a few games in the Premier League and I’ve
played quite a lot in the Championship. So your expectation is ‘I’ve played at
those standards, I should get a club at that level’ but with the injury history
I’ve got, I wasn’t daft. I knew a lot of clubs would have doubts about me. That
makes you think about whether to drop down a league, to try to come back up.
Who’s going to want me? But I tried hard not to think too much in that way. I
concentrated most on keeping myself fit and injury-free.”
Byram arranged a strength and conditioning programme with a
personal trainer and a small number of clubs were open to the idea of him
training with them. But unexpectedly, he received an out-of-the-blue message on
his mobile from Eddie Riemer, Farke’s long-time assistant. Farke had gone into
Leeds as manager at the start of July and he and his staff were putting initial
plans in place at a club who had been relegated and were in a certain amount of
disarray. Byram was tentatively invited to work with them, an offer with no
strings attached.
“I’m not really sure if there was any plan,” he says. “To
me, it was just ‘come and train, keep fit, see how you do’. In my head, I was
desperate to impress and get a contract, but I couldn’t speak for them (Farke
or his staff). I don’t know what they were thinking. As the weeks progressed,
there were pre-season friendlies and I was asked if I wanted to play in them
and get some match minutes. Each step was ‘if I can do well, that’s another box
ticked’. Prove my fitness, prove my quality, that kind of thing.”
Farke had worked with Byram at Norwich and signed him from
West Ham United in 2019. Leeds were concerned about Byram’s injury record and
Farke understood the extent of it, too, but he told the club that if he could
survive pre-season and stay fit, they would have as good a left-back as any
side in the Championship. Byram avoided missing a single session and 24 hours
before the season started, he and Leeds agreed a one-year contract.
“I’m so glad I went for it,” Byram says. “I remember getting
the text and my first query would probably have been that it’s a big risk to
come and train without any guarantees of a contract. When you’ve got a bad
track record for picking up injuries, that’s the doubt in your mind.
“I’d come off the back of two years without playing many
games, so although I thought I had a good pre-season, it was always going to be
a case where your bargaining chips are lower than if you come off the back of a
season where you’ve played 40 games and done well. But when they said they were
interested in signing me, it was just a case of ‘can we get it done in time for
the first game?’.” He made his second Leeds debut a day later, in a 2-2 draw
with Cardiff City.
Norwich were 27 minutes into a 1-0 defeat to Liverpool at
Carrow Road, midway through February 2020, when Byram stretched for a ball and
felt his hamstring go. Back in the dressing room, the pain was so bad that
Norwich’s medical staff had to cut off his boot to limit his discomfort and
minimise any further damage.
Byram went for scans and was told that he had ruptured the
muscle. An operation to screw it in place would normally take at least six
months to heal. “I was gutted by that,” he says, “but when I found out, I’d
never have known it would actually be more like two years. After five or six
months, I was expecting to be back playing. (But) it just didn’t feel right.”
The first bout of surgery was a failure. The screw had come
loose and because of that, Byram developed a cyst in the bone. A decision was
taken to repeat the operation and he was given the same message: that his
recovery time would be six to nine months. “Again, I got about six or seven
months down the line and I had this chronic pain. I couldn’t get to a stage
where I could join back in with training,” he says.
“I’d been sent to see so many specialists. I’d have scans
and they’d come back clear but there was still the pain. I was fed up of trying
things and them not working, of getting my hopes up but no one being able to
tell me what was wrong.”
Eventually, he found a groin and hamstring specialist in
London who examined him and worked out a way to help his recovery. Byram spent
a month in the capital, undergoing treatment and making more rapid, positive
progress.
“It got to the point where I just didn’t want to go into the
training ground,” he says. “Going to work with this guy in London, it was such
a relief to be away from Norwich. Not because of anyone in particular, just
because it got me away from people asking how you are, as strange as that
sounds.
“People ask out of the goodness of their heart, but when
you’re getting 30 people a day saying ‘oh, is it better?’ and every time you
have to say ‘no’, it’s quite diminishing. The spell I had in London was huge
for my mental side and my body.”
Byram finally made his comeback in a 2-0 defeat to Aston
Villa. It was December 14, 2021, and 668 days had elapsed between that game and
his previous appearance for Norwich. The gruelling road was a far cry from how
it all started for Byram; the carefree days when nothing seemed likely to stop
him.
On a scorching afternoon in the summer of 2012, Leeds — then
managed by the wily Neil Warnock — contested their first pre-season friendly at
non-league Farsley, a stone’s throw to the west of Elland Road. Byram, who was
19, played in that fixture, the first time he had appeared at a prominent
level. He had no profile to speak of and, as he knows himself, it was not as if
he had been touted as the next academy product to look out for.
In the media huddle that followed the game, Warnock was
posed a question about his right-back and, in a light-hearted moment, had to
ask the journalists present to remind him of Byram’s name. Byram hears that
story and laughs. “I’m not surprised,” he says.
“A lot of people ask how I got my chance and I’ll never
forget it. I was training with the under-21s when someone from the first team
got injured. Warnock sent his goalkeeper coach over to our training area and
told him ‘send me a right-back’. For whatever reason, I got sent over and did
really well in that one session.
“That’s where my season started. I ended up training with
them more and getting invited to pre-season. It doesn’t surprise me that
(Warnock) asked you what my name was because it’s not like now where you’ve got
Archie (Gray), who everyone in the club knows. It was a case of ‘send me a
player’ and the rest is history.”
The history was remarkable. Byram played 53 times that
season, starting 50 games. His style was pleasing on the eye and he won the
club’s player of the year award at the first attempt, adapting to the
Championship with extraordinary ease. “If you’d told me the year before that I
was going to play 50 times, I don’t know what I’d have thought,” he says. “It
wasn’t an expectation. It took a lot of people by surprise. But looking back, I
did put a lot of hours and work in. I’d like to think that if the chance hadn’t
come then, it would have come later. You’ve got to take it when you get it.”
That period was a little golden era for Leeds’ academy, a
spell in which flow from the under-21s to the first team was impressive and
impactful. To an extent, it helped that Leeds were a patch of aimless
mediocrity, but the truth about Byram and the crop around him was that they
were high-calibre prospects. There was Charlie Taylor, Lewis Cook, Alex Mowatt
and Kalvin Phillips. At various points, they outshone more senior members of
the squad. The irony with Phillips was that, for a time, he was seen as the least
promising of the pack. In the end, none of them achieved more at Elland Road or
earned the club a higher transfer fee.
“We were really good friends at the time and we’ve all kept
in touch since,” Byram says. “When you’re in it, you don’t realise how lucky
you are to be playing with four or five of the lads you grew up with. But it’s
special and it doesn’t happen too often.”
Structurally, though, Leeds were a mess. The club moved from
owner to owner without finding any direction and without shedding their habit
of courting controversy and chaos. Byram saw mid-table finish follow mid-table
finish in the Championship, with relegation more likely than promotion and
coaches coming and going regularly. By the middle of the 2015-16 season, his
future had come into question after United’s owner at the time, Massimo
Cellino, tried to renegotiate his contract — renegotiate it by offering Byram a
deal which equated to a pay cut.
Byram refused to re-sign and in January 2016, he was sold to
West Ham for just under £4million ($5m). Cellino, never shy with words, painted
him as the bad guy. “Sam Byram is the only one that maybe thinks Leeds is too
small for him,” Cellino said. “He didn’t sign the new contract and he won’t
sign it anymore. He’s been offered a contract a few times, he didn’t want to
sign and I’m deeply offended.”
Byram is matter-of-fact about the politics and his reasons
for leaving. “The three seasons I had involvement in, we finished (low down the
Championship),” he says. “In my last one, I had so many managers. There was no
stability at all at the club. There was no direction I could see of us
competing even in the Championship.
“I’m not sure what I am allowed to say, but Massimo Cellino
tried to convince me to sign a new contract on much worse terms. When West Ham
and Everton at the time were interested, giving me the chance to play in the
Premier League — whether you’re a Leeds fan or not, given the opportunity to
live your dream, the top aspiration, most people if they’re honest would have
taken the chance.
“But I’ve thought back since and with hindsight, if I’d
known that the club would achieve promotion (in 2020) — to be able to play in
the Premier League with Leeds — I’d like to say I’d have turned the move down.
You just can’t guess what the future holds. You have to make a decision based
on the facts, on what you know and what you’re given. There are some regrets
that I missed out on getting Leeds promoted, but I feel like this is a second
chance to achieve that.”
What he questioned in the summer, when he came back on
trial, was how his reappearance might be perceived. Were the crowd sympathetic
about what went on in 2016? Or would they hold Byram’s acrimonious departure
against him? Cellino is not exactly held in high esteem in the city, but Leeds’
support can be ruthless with those who are seen to be disloyal. The summer saga
around Willy Gnonto was an example of that.
“I did wonder,” Byram says. “When I started training here it
was a secret, but I knew it wouldn’t stay that way forever. I was curious as to
what the reaction would be — especially to someone coming towards their 30s
with a poor injury record. I could understand why some people would question
why I was here. I only hope that as the season goes on, I can do my best for
them.”
On that front, Byram is winning so far. The reaction to him
has been warm and welcoming, perhaps an appreciation of the fact that, in 2016,
Leeds were not a club talented footballers were inclined to stick with. Nor has
Byram’s personality ever been that of a mercenary.
Farke has managed him with care, particularly conscious not
to push him too hard in moments in which Leeds have three matches in a week,
and Byram says he has been able to train “95 per cent of the time” — at least
before his injury against Plymouth. He has played well, locking down the
left-back position. And towards the end of September, he got the rush he was
chasing and the rush he was missing when he headed in the second goal in a 3-0
win against Watford.
