Crysencio Summerville just wants time to play - The Square Ball 5/4/22
RIGHT PLACE, TIME TBC
Written by: Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman
Crysencio Summerville timed everything perfectly for Leeds
United Under-23s against Crystal Palace. Three were just enough minutes for the
near 5,000 crowd to take their places in the West Stand, and for new first team
manager Jesse Marsch to find his seat. Summerville let them all settle down but
not for too long, grabbing their attention by cutting in from the left, beating
a couple, and swinging a shot almost at leisure into the top corner. Some
people hadn’t had time to check the teamsheet yet. Who’s playing? Crysencio
Summerville.
From there he made the match his. His hat-trick wasn’t
completed until the final minutes, and overall Leeds had a more frustrating
night than the final 4-0 score suggests. But it didn’t matter too much if
Summerville was scoring or not. If there was an attack, he was in it. If there
was a tackle, he was making it, at both ends of the pitch. If Leeds got a
throw-in he was taking it, if they conceded a free-kick he was delaying it, if
they won one he was on the end of it. He was all about being involved.
Summerville’s involvement or otherwise was a hot first team
topic in January, when he asked for a loan away. Cody Drameh got out and is
apparently thriving at Cardiff. Summerville had to stay. That he was here in
January was actually a statement of Marcelo Bielsa’s faith in him — last
season’s hot prospect winger, Ian Poveda, was shuffled out on loan to
Blackburn, making room for Summerville, and when Dan James arrived as a new
option on the wing, it was Helder Costa who left and Summerville who became
part of the pool of four wingers Bielsa was picking from. Injuries, Covid and
the small matter of Raphinha limited Summerville’s involvement, but Bielsa
could be excused for being exasperated at the demands to play him. Summerville is
twenty, and in the Premier League this season, only eleven players his age or
younger have played over 900 minutes, and they’re all household names: Bukayo
Saka, Valentino Livramento, Jacob Ramsey. Summerville has played a mere 122,
but that still gets him in the top 25. Joe Gelhardt, the other player Bielsa
had to justify leaving out, is the third most active player aged nineteen or
under in the division, only behind Livramento and Anthony Elanga. Premier
League clubs, as a rule, have not been using youngsters, but Bielsa was being
constantly asked to use them more, while also being asked to keep the team
safely in the division. He was caught between demands to tighten up at the
back, and to chuck Cody Drameh, Summerville and Gelhardt in the team while he
was at it. All this is history now, but the pressure hasn’t lessened: Angus
Kinnear’s programme notes for the Southampton game claimed Marsch had been
appointed to ‘fast-track some of the exciting developing talent that is core to
our long-term strategy’; the fourteen players used in that match had an average
age over 26 and only Joffy was younger than 22. That’s typical for the Premier
League — as of today, there are ten active players aged eighteen or younger,
with an average of 55 minutes each; but at Leeds, it’s not enough that the
second most used of them is Leo Hjelde. We want more kids playing and we want
them now.
None of that big picture stuff matters when you’re twenty
years old and brilliant at football, though, which is why the club’s kids can
be excused if they’re thinking they should be the first name on Bielsa or
Marsch’s teamsheet. That confidence goes hand in hand with scoring a hat-trick
and winning 4-0. Summerville’s other two goals weren’t bad either; Archie Gray
sent him to the byline in the second half, and one trick later the ball was in
the top corner again; right at the end, for the second time in the game,
Summerville was challenging the keeper outside the area and rolling a shot
towards goal — the first went wide, the second went in. In between those two,
Stuart McKinstry got a straight ball from Nohan Kenneh into the box, stepped
over it and finished with aplomb.
Leeds had started brightly, arguably playing a better
version of Marschball in the first twenty minutes than we’ve seen from the
first team so far. The front four of Summerville and Stuart McKinstry wide with
Sam Greenwood behind Gelhardt were moving and rearranging across the width of
the eighteen yard box, a lot of it dictated by the force of Summerville’s
personality and desire to play, and Greenwood should have finished a couple of
chances. They all love flying in to press and tackle, but I think part of this
is driven by the advantage at youth level of coming up against kids you want to
prove are weaker than you, so you can put them on the floor and laugh at them.
If Palace did get out, Kenneh was patrolling midfield, and in goal Dani van den
Heuvel only had a couple of saves to make. Leeds even found time to drill some
of the crossfield passes along the halfway line that Marsch has got the first
team using to switch.
A heart stopping injury to Gelhardt started rearranging some
of this; Archie Gray came on, assured as ever, to play behind Greenwood; in the
second half Greenwood was replaced by Mateo Joseph, Jack Jenkins by Max Dean,
and the disruption took Leeds down a few notches even while they were adding to
the score. Gelhardt is, apparently, going to be alright when his dead leg
revives, but given the one thing Marsch wanted from him was minutes, after a
week’s training before Wolves was lost to a back strain and the international
break was interrupted by a false-positive Covid test, it’s yet another thing
that will hold Joffy back from the Premier League that might one day be his by
right. At this stage he might have to settle for being the world sensation of
next season.
Summerville, too. His early goal here might have been scored
out of frustration that the Under-23s level is just too easy for him now, and
he might as well win the game with a screamer in the first five minutes. But
what’s the downside of where he is? In the first team squad he’s seen off
Poveda and Costa, and in the kid-unfriendly Premier League he’s drummed up
minutes that peers would envy. Raphinha and Jackie Harrison are carrying the
stress of the relegation battle, while Summerville gets to go down Elland Road
on a weeknight, stick a few in the top corner in front of 5,000 people,
celebrate with his mates and impress the new boss. Everyone knows that
Raphinha’s future is a big question mark, and every club tweet showing clips of
Summerville hitting the top corner adds to the idea that his replacement is
already here. The future always brings worry, and Summerville might miss these
days when they’re gone. He is in the right place, but even if it’s not the
right time, he should still be having a great time.