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.

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