Jesse Marsch before Watford says all the right people are wrong ‘uns - The Square Ball 7/4/22

EARN IT

Written by: Rob Conlon

Perhaps Jesse Marsch has already reached the Marcelo Bielsa stage of being tired of answering questions about Joffy Gelhardt. He started his pre-Watford press conference with his usual ‘sit down, shut up, and let me tell you about injuries before you get the chance to ask’ address at Thorp Arch. Longer-term absentees Tyler Roberts, Junior Firpo and Patrick Bamford are all “making good progress”. Jamie Shackleton is almost ready to join training again, but not quite. As for the rest of them, “I think” they’re all available, said Jesse.

I enjoyed Marsch being vague and succinct — the man has said enough over his first month in charge of Leeds — but the journos in the room weren’t going to let him get away with it. What about Joffy, who was subbed off with a dead leg in the Under-23s’ win over Crystal Palace on Monday? Ah, well, he hasn’t been able to train every day this week, but Marsch hopes he will be training on Friday. “We think he will be available for the match on the weekend,” he said, so there’s no need to tweet with fury about Dan James being named up front at Watford.

This was one of Marsch’s shorter pressers, at thirty minutes, but there was still plenty of time to get through a number of subjects:

Liam Cooper was “courageous” in his comeback from injury against Southampton. Courageous Coops is a much better nickname than League One Liam

Marsch described Watford as “aggressive and lethal in transition” when trying to make them sound like they aren’t a bunch of losers closer to Norwich in the table than they are Leeds

He has been speaking to Crysencio Summerville about his “professional behaviour off the pitch” — ‘don’t get your big bro to beat me up’ — and Cry’s hat-trick for the U23s is evidence “he is learning more, that he is more prepared, and we can count on him more and more”

The technical details of Illan Meslier’s goalkeeping, like his positioning at free-kicks, is for the goalkeeping coaches to sort out. Marsch has been working with Meslier on his role in possession, telling him he’s the “quarter-back” of the team when restarting play

Sometimes Marsch joins in training as a player, but he is “very, very limited” and hates “being the guy that looks so old on the pitch”

He hesitated before saying Robin Koch, and instead called him Robin Cook, who used to be foreign secretary in the Labour government

Marsch held a recruitment meeting with Victor Orta on Wednesday but the focus was on the current squad and how they want it to evolve over the next six months, twelve months and two years, rather than discussing specific targets definitely not called Brenden Aaronson

Phil Hay didn’t have anything to ask him, so Jesse grinned at him and said, “Okay, Phil”

He then stitched Phil up on a hot mic at the end, saying “I heard you spoke to Mitch, huh?” before the stream went down, gently letting him know that he can’t speak to the Princeton Tigers’ men’s basketball coach without word getting back along the Ivy League wires

There was some welcome feistiness to Marsch’s answers, which made the press conference a lot more interesting than some of his more recent interviews. After being asked by the YEP’s Graham Smyth how Leeds can stop being as defensively open out wide, Jesse paused to think about what to say, then told Smyth he was wrong. I enjoyed hearing a Leeds manager say “unbalance the opponent” in a press conference again:

“I wouldn’t totally agree with that. I think that a big part of our system of moving is not that the wide areas are open, it’s that we are always ready to attack in every situation together. If we are too wide, then we have too many gaps in our team and give up too much space in transition moments, crossing moments and any defensive moments. So we’re certainly not as expansive as we were in the past, but a big part of that is to control the opponent at all moments.

“I would say a big reason that we have defended better is because we’re not so expansive. Now it’s about how to still unbalance the opponent, even though we’re still more compact than what we were. If you look at expected goals, chances created and any of these data points, I think we’ve been better in those areas. I think it is because they are understanding the tactics and strategies, but we can still be better.

“By saying we don’t play wide is incorrect, but we know where the goal is and it’s not in the corner. It’s in the middle of the field and we want to be vertical, and we want to make sure that the opponent knows that we’re ready to be vertical at all moments. Again, that will mean that the opponent has to be a bit more cautious about how they want to attack. So these are all strategies and the tactics match with what the strategies are. Again, I think our team is getting more and more comfortable about what that is and what that means.”

Marsch was describing how his tactics should work when everything goes to plan, but as Patrick Bamford said in LUTV commentary during the draw with Southampton, when the metaphorical “net” of Leeds’ press doesn’t work, “then obviously [the other team] get out and there’s a lot of space out wide. It’s important we win the ball back when everyone is close together.”

There are going to be occasions when the net doesn’t work because the squad is still learning how Jesse wants them to play, fighting the urge to go full murderball. Marsch explained why that transition is going to be a slow process, and where Leeds are currently at:

“When I first came I was just trying to relieve the tension, the focus on results, and the worry about what was happening in the table. Then for me to create a process and a transition for the players to play in that is slightly different to what Marcelo wanted it to be. There is so many details that go into that. But it is what I have been doing, everyday going into details, more into behaviours and creating training sessions that reinforce exactly those things.

“Coming out of every game, there could be a hundred topics I could touch on. I am trying to focus on exactly the right topics that will help us for the next opponent and the process to move and get closer to ideally what I want us to be in a year or two years, whatever the process here is. To be fair, the players get that, they grasp it and they put it to practice at a high level every day.

“So, I said it was our best counter-pressing game — it was, but we have so much room to improve there. Southampton decided to pretty much play every second pass long, so we then have to think about closing our team, picking up second balls and what actions or tactics we need from that moment.

“We still need to make sure we are sharp at defending set pieces and attacking set pieces. I think we have done a good job there but there is more improvement we can make. Our build-up phase was good against Southampton, but how it leads to us being a little more dangerous in the final third. We are still developing our advantages in front of goal, but it is about putting the building blocks together and creating clarity for our group so they need to understand how all of those things can improve and execute on game day.”

Marsch wants to include some of Leeds’ emerging prospects in that style, but while Angus Kinnear is telling us the kids have been fast-tracked since the change in management, Jesse is urging caution with the likes of Joffy, Summerville, Sam Greenwood and Charlie Cresswell. Two things will help: being able to use five substitutes rather than three from next season, and periods when the fixture list gives Leeds multiple games in a week. Chelsea at home in May is the only midweek game Leeds have until the end of the season, so we might have to wait before we get to see Nohan Kenneh balancing his games to yellow cards ratio.

Still, when Marsch says his job during a congested fixture list “is to prepare the group to ensure every player is ready and that is so important in those moments”, I can’t help but take that as the Red Bull way of saying, “I’m not a big balding baby like Frank Lampard.” We know Marsch has made Lampard cry once before, and I’m starting to warm to him the more I hear him make enemies with the right people.

Staying on the topic of entitled idiots, Marsch was asked about new plans to expand the Champions League, reserving two places for so-called ‘historic’ clubs that fail to qualify (I’m looking forward to watching Sheffield FC playing at the Bernabeu). Jesse paraphrased Leeds’ response to the Super League Six last season. Earn it, dickheads:

“One of the reasons I respect that tournament so much is because when I was at Salzburg, you had to fight like hell to be a part of it. Even the Austrian League, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, they have to fight as a league to gain places in the tournament. That is what I love about the tournament, that you have to earn your way in and there is a little bit of a David vs Goliath in the group phases and how you manage those situations.

“To do anything to compromise the integrity of the tournament, like they were doing with the Super League, doesn’t make sense. Certainly in football, and if I come from an American sports perspective, we are all about parity and salary caps, we need to make sure everybody has a chance. I think the heavily weighted clubs are already weighted enough, and if they have a down year and aren’t able to perform at the level they should then they shouldn’t be included. You have to earn your way into the Champions League, that’s my opinion.”

That’s more like it, Jesse! And check him dropping this in after being asked how he has got on with other managers in the Premier League:

“Dean Smith was mad at me for not shaking his hand, so we didn’t spend as much time [together] after the match.”

Nothing has made me like Jesse more than finding out Dean Smith doesn’t like him. The football still needs work, and time, but Smith’s scorn is definitely a sign he’s doing something right. Marsch mentioned Smith as the exception to how he’s found managers in England, “congenial. Maybe too congenial for me.” Smith aside, he has been spending time with his contemporaries after Leeds’ fixtures, enjoying that “the respect for that shared misery in England is pretty strong.” He’s only been in Leeds for one month, but he’s slowly starting to sound like one of us.