Life in Leeds U21s is as precarious as it always will be — Square Ball 9/2/24

CAN'T WIN

Written by: Rob Conlon

Professional sport tries to kid itself that enough coin and data will eradicate the random nature of, in football’s case, 22 people kicking a ball around a pitch. Youth development is a prime example. Clubs across the country invest millions of pounds hiring the best coaches, developing the best facilities, and poaching the best talent, trying to unearth the latest gem who will either save them a few quid in the transfer market or earn them millions more. Meanwhile, authorities tinker with competition formats and quotas convincing themselves a sixteen-team play-off competition for reserves is just the trick to create the next golden generation. Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is money can’t buy Eddie Gray’s genes.

Youth development has become, as Daniel Farke likes to say, a ‘topic’ at Leeds United in recent weeks. The Under-21s have begun a new cycle under Scott Gardner, their sixth head coach in the last four years, while the majority of prospects signed by Victor Orta have either been sold or loaned out never to be seen in a Leeds shirt again, leaving a core of Under-18s to step up and concede thirteen goals in their last three games.

When Gardner’s side lost 3-1 to Sunderland last week, I couldn’t help but return to a couple of questions I often ask myself when watching the U21s: who is this for, and who does it benefit? While U18s midfielder Dan Toulson was making his first PL2 start for Leeds surrounded by similarly ‘inexperienced’ players at that level alongside mainstays of the side who have reached a dead end, Sunderland were racing into a 3-0 first-half lead thanks to two goals from 25-year-old Ukrainian striker Nazariy Rusyn, who has made over 100 senior appearances and has played and scored in the Europa League for Dynamo Kiev. Rusyn was signed by Sunderland in the summer as their most senior centre-forward, and the goals evidently rekindled his scoring touch as he came off the bench to net their equaliser against Middlesbrough at the weekend, only his second of the season. I’m sure Gardner and Toulson are delighted for him.

The shoe has often been on the other foot, as Southampton’s B team found out at Elland Road last season, when they lost 6-2 to a Leeds ‘U21’ side that wasn’t far off a line-up Farke could have fielded in the Championship this term: Pat Bamford scored a hat-trick, supplied by an attacking midfield trio of Wilf Gnonto, Cree Summerville, and Sonny Perkins, playing ahead of Archie Gray and Darko Gyabi, and backed by a defence of Junior Firpo, Liam Cooper, Leo Hjelde, and Bill Ayling. Maybe one day Southampton’s goalscorer Sam Bellis will look back at that night at Elland Road as a career highlight — signed by Southampton from Man City, he’s now on loan at Kidderminster from Barrow.

The obvious alternative is for a club to send their best young players out on loan so they can experience ‘proper’ football, but nobody really knows if that’s the best idea or not. Marcelo Bielsa argued it was better for Leeds’ most talented academy players to be coached at Thorp Arch and make up the numbers in murderball; Cody Drameh (and, briefly, Cree Summerville) disagreed. When The Athletic first launched their football coverage, I remember reading an article in which an unnamed agent suggested there was nothing worse for a player’s career than an unproductive loan move. In the very next sentence, a different source said some people don’t know what they’re talking about. (I can no longer find the article, but you will have to trust me that if I was going to make something up I’d at least make it far more interesting.)

Stuck in Leeds’ U21s after spending the first half of the season on loan at Oxford, where the only impression he made was a half-arsed performance in the EFL Trophy that meant none of their fans were arguing when he couldn’t make the bench in League One, Sonny Perkins probably now understands what the first agent was saying. Leo Hjelde might be thinking that you can’t win either way.

The only time I noticed Perkins in the U21s defeat to Sunderland was when he twice turned down opportunities to shoot when given a clear sight at goal. On both occasions he tried to spin on the ball and was knocked over. After the second, Sunderland countered and Rusyn made it 2-0. Leeds have only published highlights of the U21s’ fixture against Chelsea in the Premier League Cup on Monday, but Perkins is again absent in making much of a contribution. Instead, they begin with Leeds’ teens looking similarly overwhelmed, conceding the opener after ‘keeper Darryl Ombang passes the ball straight to a Chelsea attacker and Toulson — the latest player to fill in at left-back because we’re not allowed any — losing possession in his own penalty area, followed by Harvey Sutcliffe giving a throw-in straight to Chelsea’s striker to score their second.

But there were the first signs for optimism under Gardner, Leeds playing some lovely touch-and-thwack for Charlie Allen’s opener, Marley Wilson carrying his goalscoring streak from the U18s up an age group by thumping in the second, and Luca Thomas poaching a late equaliser for his second in two games. In midfield, seventeen-year-old Charlie Crew is already a Wales U21 international and has turned down approaches to switch allegiance to England, enjoying the guidance of former Leeds midfielder Matt Jones, who has coached him through the Wales youth system.

Earlier this week Phil Hay wrote an article for The Athletic questioning Leeds’ ‘emerging talent’ transfer strategy and pointing out that, for all the investment and focus Leeds have put on their academy recruitment, for every Pascal Struijk or Cree Summerville, there’s an Ian Poveda or Cody Drameh. Part of this boils down to pure logistics; Victor Orta’s first wave of academy signings — Madger Gomes, Oriol Rey, Hugo Diaz et al — were required because the youth teams had been left to rot under Massimo Cellino to such an extent that Leeds needed to sign a hoard of teenagers just to field a team to fulfil their fixtures.

But mainly, yes, for every Struijk or Summerville there will be countless others who don’t make it because it has always been this way, no matter whether they’re plucked from Huesca or Holbeck. At my old job working for the website Planet Football, we published dozens of interviews with former academy players who were highly rated but ultimately fell down the divisions or out of the game altogether. A theme developed that they usually blamed one of three factors — an unfortunately timed injury, a manager who took a liking to them losing their job, a loan spell that didn’t go as envisaged, or a combination of any of the three.

Such sliding doors moments can be frighteningly precarious. For every Paul Robinson or Jonny Woodgate, who won the 1997 Youth Cup with Leeds, there was a Wesley Boyle, who made his debut at 17 then was ruled out for two years with injury due to two operations and some botched advice from a physio who was later sacked; or Paul Shepherd, who broke Gary Speed’s goalscoring records from midfield in the youth team and was liked by Howard Wilkinson and Paul Hart but was never spoken to by George Graham, even when he was given his one and only appearance up against Patrick Vieira at Arsenal. “It just made me become a bit bitter,” he said. “As a young guy, I was just finishing training and couldn’t wait to get away from there… you go to training with two or three people and are just being made to run, it’s demoralising. These people were playing with my life and were seemingly out to ruin it.” Last year, Shepherd was sentenced to nine years in jail after being found guilty of producing and conspiring to supply drugs and money laundering.

As Sean McGurk brought his three years at Elland Road to an end and packed his bags for Swindon and League Two football, I wonder what he would point to as his sliding doors moment at Leeds. Despite being the U21s best player for the last two years, he’s never appeared close to a first-team breakthrough under various managers, nor has he had a bad injury to blame. We’ll never know whether a loan would have gone right or wrong, because interest never materialised into a temporary move in 2022. In an ideal world, Archie Gray would be proof that cream always rises to the top. But as McGurk would have learned watching Weston McKennie and Rasmus Kristensen relegate Leeds last season, sometimes shit floats.