Marcelo Bielsa's words and Patrick Bamford's 'sudden' Leeds United return explained - YEP 3/3/22

The sight of Patrick Bamford joining in with Leeds United training session was one for sore eyes, but this was not his first time out on the grass.

By Graham Smyth

Bamford was fully involved as the Whites squad popped passes around and hassled each other for the ball in rondo keep-ball exercises on Thursday morning, ahead of some set-piece work under the watchful eye of their new head coach Jesse Marsch.

The proximity of a return to action for the striker, said to be 'close' by Marsch, has left supporters puzzled because it comes so soon after Marcelo Bielsa rated Bamford's chances of playing again this season as merely 'probable.'

But there has been no miracle, Rob Price has not developed a new cure and there is no conspiracy at play.

The apparent discrepancy between the Argentine's final public utterance on his first-choice number nine and the information coming out of Thorp Arch today is relatively simple to explain - Bielsa was managing expectation.

Bamford has had a torrid time of it since September and a complicated one. First it was an ankle injury. Then it was a hamstring problem. Following that, he picked up a quad issue. Most recently he tore his plantar fascia - the long, thin ligament just beneath the skin on the sole of the foot.

As Bielsa said, the pain of that injury needed to subside before Bamford could make a return.

As seen in the case of Adam Forshaw and other long-term injury victims, Bielsa never seemed particularly comfortable or content divulging much in the way of detail on such matters and could be vague in his responses. When asked, just under a week ago, if Bamford had managed to return to the grass Bielsa indicated that he had not. That update came at a time when Bielsa was facing increasingly frequent questions over the potential impact his injured players would have on the team's struggles, form and relegation survival chances. For Bielsa, the answer to the problems he was facing did not and could not lie in absent players, firstly because he took responsibility for fixing them himself and secondly because with Bamford, Kalvin Phillips and Liam Cooper all suffering delays or setbacks to some degree in their recoveries, it would not be prudent to pin too much expectation on returns he could not guarantee. It's likely he was also attempting to put a stopper in the way of mounting pressure on Bamford to come back and save the team.

 

While Bielsa was managing expectation and giving the latest information the treatment he felt it warranted, the medical staff were treating Bamford's pain and managing his recovery. With such injuries the careful management of a player's training load is key and overdoing it would risk sending him back to square one. Plantar fasciitis can be a slow burner too - it gave Leicester City's Jonny Evans such trouble that he feared he may have to retire. But, happily for Leeds and the player himsef, Bamford did actually return to the grass six days ago before Bielsa sat down with the press, and was slowly but steadily progressing.

Reports that emerged suggesting Leeds had high hopes of being able to re-introduce Bamford for the Aston Villa game on 10th March appeared to be directly contradicted by what Bielsa said, but Marsch has confirmed he's awaiting word on whether or not the striker can make the bench this weekend. As it stands, he definitely has at least a chance for the Villa game.

Bamford isn't back, but he's close to it and while it cannot come soon enough for Leeds United it's clear that Marsch will take no risks.

"I can only tell you that on Monday I came here and met with the medical team and they introduced a whole myriad of injury situations to me," said the American.

"And there has been a little bit of a cycle here where guys have been fighting through injuries and often playing with injuries and it means that they have sometimes picked up other injuries and put themselves more in danger of missing minutes and so what I need to do is help guys recover as quickly as possible but not endanger them and not overload them to put them in situations to further be endangered, and then make sure that we have a long term vision in place for what that is going to mean. I have said this before, it’s 12 games, it’s not three games or four games right and I know that we need points but we need to make sure that we are getting stronger as we move along and not weaker."