Good morning, all your favourite Leeds United players are broken again - The Square Ball 8/12/21
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Written by: Moscowhite • Daniel Chapman
Fun fact: the iconic 1-11 loads of us memorised when Leeds
United won the league title in 1991/92 only started nine league games together
that season. Injuries were a constant problem, although Howard Wilkinson could
normally tell enough of his hobbling players to stop putting it on and push
them down the tunnel to make it look like a first team, and that one time he
threatened (maybe a different season, don’t remember) to drug David Batty and
hope nobody tested him was honestly just him joking. Plus we won the league so
it was fine.
This year’s brief dalliance with something resembling
Marcelo Bielsa’s first team got us a draw with Brentford — big deal! — and now
they’re all broken again and what the heck. It’s hard not to feel the glee with
which the Mail have teased their ‘Bamford Injury Nightmare’ story on their back
page: ‘Their next four games are against Chelsea, Manchester City, Arsenal and
Liverpool’ they write, just after the words ‘six points above the drop zone’.
YES WE KNOW.
Bamford is only the first course. According to the Mail he
injured himself celebrating that last minute goal and, yes, if you go back to
the tape you can see him wincing as he emerges from the scrum of players, watch
him sitting down on the ground at full-time with the face of someone who knows
he’s just hurt himself mucking about being silly, looking around for someone he
can tell without getting into trouble. The Mail are calling this a ‘tweak’ to
his hamstring and not committing to timescales, only committing to it being a
DISASTER. I’m not arguing!
It’s Kalvin Phillips they’re really putting in the
headlines. ‘Severe Setback!’ the Telegraph say. ‘Kalvin Phillips!’ Uh, leave me
alone. ‘Two months!’ For two months, leave me alone for two months exactly
please and not a minute less, go away.
When he went off against Brentford on Sunday it looked like
from his troublesome calf, but he was holding his knee a bit, the Telegraph
(and the Mail, they’re in on this too) say hamstring. No tweaks here, it’s an
injury. And that’s it, that’s the news, no quotes no nothing, you don’t need to
read anything else anywhere else today because they’re all full of unhelpful
reminders about our record with Kalvin and without Kalvin, as Paul Heckingbottom
would say (the Mail have even done an infographic, the monsters). Your main
course: Kalvin Phillips, hamstring injury, two months. If that’s two months
from Sunday he could be back in time for Aston Villa away on 8th February.
That’s something to look forward to! Just do yourself a favour and don’t look
up the games he’ll miss.
Dessert? That would be news about Liam Cooper, who got this
new wave of hurt rolling after quarter of an hour on Sunday, but nobody is
reporting anything about him. ‘Also facing a spell on the sidelines’, says the
Mail, and the absence of detail feels a bit mean. Don’t treat our club captain
like an afterthought you pigs, he’s important to us!
That’s it, unless the witches in the well under Elland Road
who were obviously disturbed back into action when the pitch was relaid in
summer have any more treats for us this week. There’s probably some calm
upsides to be found about how Bamford’s not hurt too bad, Kalvin will be back
for the run in and maybe nobody will want to buy him after this (he’s injury
prone, back off PSG), it might force a January buy, Lewis Bate might get a
chance, we have other players (THEY’RE ALL HURT TOO), blah blah blah. But I’ve
not even had breakfast yet and I’ve already eaten too much.
