Joe Rodon: The short-term option who may yet offer the longevity Leeds need — The Athletic 22/1/24

By Phil Hay

Recruitment in football has long been the equivalent of chess, where the best in the business nail the here-and-now decisions while also looking two or three moves ahead.

And making the right decisions here and now usually depends on looking two or three moves ahead, because no transfer department worth its salt likes to act on a whim.

Leeds United are surrounded by the here-and-now, the short-term immediacy of everyone waiting to see what they do in this window, if anything. But chatter about Joe Rodon last week was a nod to the fact that the club are already pondering that world of variables which is the prospect of promotion. There is no guarantee that Leeds are going up, but if they do they can’t merely cross that bridge when they come to it. If promotion gets away from them, they can’t enter year two in the Championship without planning ahead either. One eye on January, the other on bigger pictures. Scouts and analysts juggling balls.

Counting chickens is risky — and by all means take it game by game — but where Rodon is concerned, Leeds are into the process of weighing up whether he is a player for today and a player for tomorrow. Consideration of that is unavoidable, even though they won’t rush into converting his loan to a permanent deal before the January window closes. Tottenham Hotspur included no recall clause in his temporary agreement, a decision which laid bare Rodon’s lack of prominence there. Leeds know he is for sale anyway because when they enquired about him over the summer, Spurs asked for £15million at first. They would probably ask for more now, on the basis that Rodon has done what clubs hope extraneous loanees will do: go out, make waves, enhance their value. All of those boxes he is ticking.

Rodon has everything you want in a Championship centre-back: the defensive tenets of covering runs, interceptions, aerial strength and good physicality but the counter-balance of comfort in possession and competence on the ball. He has been Leeds’ best loan signing since Ben White, who coincidentally offered all of that too (and did it better again, hence Arsenal wading in and paying Brighton £50million for him a year later). White was too expensive for Leeds to buy, and they signed no better defender in the Premier League. He was a player with the scope to be an asset at either level, which perhaps Rodon could be too, albeit with more years behind him than White.

Leeds’ form at Elland Road this season speaks positively about what Rodon has done for Daniel Farke. There is far more to the club’s unbeaten streak there than Rodon alone because hardly an opposition side comes to the ground without being slightly passive, or disruptive, or niggly.

But yesterday, against Preston North End, was another home fixture and another home victory, the 10th of the season in a run of 14 matches without defeat, admittedly laced with late chaos. What goes on at the back means Leeds always have a chance of winning these fixtures. The only occasion under Farke when Leeds looked a genuine mess at the back, away at Southampton in September, was the one occasion when Farke had Rodon available and purposely chose not to play him. There have been off-days on the road, no question, but the main reason why Charlie Cresswell cannot get a game is the Welshman standing in front of him.

What Leeds have to work out, or take a considered view on, is whether Rodon’s excellent form in the Championship would transfer neatly to the Premier League, a level at which he has few and fleeting appearances. The leap has always been big and unpredictable but this season’s Premier League table is a particularly stark example of how transitioning from one division to the other asks so much of promoted clubs.

Jesse Marsch has been going on recently about the percentage chance of a side who go up dropping down again quickly, and there is no doubt that a team who ship three big chances a game are very likely to get it. But Leeds made the same calculation when they won the Championship title in 2020: that the odds of losing Premier League status again were very short in the shorter term. History shows they rode the crest of a wave, got away with murder once, then got it irredeemably wrong. Second time around, it has to be different.

Behind the scenes at Elland Road, they are philosophical about being ruthless if and when they escape the Championship again. If the squad needs redrawn then it needs redrawn, because survival is everything and passengers cost you. There are several players at Leeds, Rodon one and Ethan Ampadu another, who fall into that grey area of being easily good enough for England’s second tier without anyone being able to say beyond doubt that they would thrive amid more extreme talent, but in the cases of Rodon and Ampadu, this is the sort of spell which can lay the ground for growth and progression.

Form is strong and confidence is up. What better time to let them take the plunge and attempt to make the adjustment?

The two of them paired up in the centre of defence again yesterday, and Elland Road got its staple result at a stadium where Leeds have so far dropped only eight points and conceded only 10 goals. How they got there was not so simple, conceding to Preston’s first attack, replying quickly through Dan James and then paddling and paddling until added time when the ball spun onto Ryan Ledson’s right arm, a penalty materialised and Joel Piroe smacked it in. Two points dropped against Preston would have looked and smelled like the play-offs looming. As it is, no need for Farke to concede to them yet.

Preston tried to hassle and bully, to leave a foot in and drain minutes here and there, but little of that works on Rodon. He was everywhere in the game, totting up clearances, nodding forward the header which Ledson handled, sprinting with a message from the bench to make sure Piroe took the penalty, sprinting back towards the bench in delight as it went in, shaking off a flicker of cramp to chase a Preston foray into Leeds box and see it out. He is Farke’s best centre-back, and the German did not make much effort on Friday to disguise the appeal of making Rodon’s loan permanent.

“The more games you play, the more confident and comfortable it becomes,” said Rodon at the end of yesterday’s win. “I can only be grateful for the opportunities I’ve been given by the coach. I feel in a good place and not just me. We’ve got a really good, balanced team here. Personally, I’m loving every minute.”

That Rodon is so comfortably within his depth now does not mean it would be easy for him in a subsequent Premier League year, and his thoughts on his future are his own for now, but he and Leeds have become a good fit, technically and in terms of personality. Every squad needs depth, every squad needs character and, however sentiment-free a club have to be on the way up, every squad needs a certain amount of continuity.

At the right price and with this consistency, Rodon clears the bar.