More loans, clearer divide with first-team, constant recruitment: Leeds Under-23s will evolve again this summer - The Athletic 22/4/22
By Phil Hay
They were reminiscing at Leeds United this week about the
afternoon in 2019 when crowds queued around the block to watch their under-23s
win the Professional Development League. Youth team football has that effect in
Leeds, a city bitten by the bug ever since Don Revie caught it himself.
The interest was there again last night as 21,321 streamed
into Elland Road for the last home game of Leeds’ Premier League 2 season,
against the perceived power of Manchester City’s under-23s. It was a more
regular fixture unlike the national final of three years ago but the attendance
set a new record for the development division, surpassing the crowd of 17,525
set by Everton and Liverpool in 2017. The chippy over the road was swamped
before kick-off, an unusually hectic Friday.
Leeds give season-ticket holders and club members free
access to under-23s games and a concerted push during the past fortnight to
publicise yesterday’s match had the desired impact but the club have managed to
make events of the academy contests they stage at Elland Road. Previously this
season they posted attendances of close to 10,000 against Manchester United and
almost 9,000 against Arsenal and Liverpool. These are evenings when voices on
the touchline might otherwise echo around empty stands.
The occasion deserved a good audience. Manchester City were
going for the title, which they wrapped up with a wobbly 3-1 win. Leeds were
looking for a result which fended off relegation from PL2’s top tier, having
pieced together better form since Christmas. “It’s massive for the whole
academy,” said Charlie Cresswell, the under-23s captain, beforehand. “We want
to stay in division one.” It is 12 short months since Leeds were promoted to it
and on the basis of the spells where they bullied City, it was hard to feel
that they deserve a lesser stage.
Andrew Taylor, Leeds’ interim development squad coach, tried
not to over-egg the anticipated crowd with his players but there was no denying
that few under-23s fixtures take place in front of anything like it. “You
probably don’t get any closer to a Premier League game at this level,” Taylor
said. “It’s 20,000 at home to Manchester City, with them going for the title
and us needing to stay in the league.” Football as it should be, or as Leeds’
younger crop hope it will be. “All of the lads here want a career in Leeds’
first team,” Taylor said, “and every Saturday you’re going to have this — or 10
times this. You’ve got to embrace the pressure.”
The under-23s at Leeds have gone through the same experience
as the first team this season: after three years on an upward trajectory,
forced to dig in and fight hard for their league status. There are mitigating
factors for their poorer results, the biggest being the injury crisis at senior
level which forced Marcelo Bielsa to strip the development squad of their most
dependable players, and with Derby County already relegated, second-bottom
Chelsea are the only team who can send Leeds down. For all that results can be
secondary in the academy psyche, yesterday’s game played out with lasting
intensity.
For Leeds, the under-23s remain a core part of their
footballing strategy, their focus on it undiminished by the recent performance
of their first team or the overwhelming view that the club were too thin and
short on established players to thrive in the Premier League second time
around. But changes to the academy have been seen since the sacking of Bielsa
and the appointment of Jesse Marsch as head coach and the under-23s will evolve
again this summer in the way they are managed and the way the squad is
maintained.
Taylor, the former Middlesbrough and Cardiff City defender,
has been coaching the development squad for the past two months after switching
from his role as Leeds’ loan manager. Marsch’s arrival saw previous under-23s
coach Mark Jackson promoted to the first-team staff. Marsch is expected to make
further alterations to his backroom team in the summer and one of the
candidates for a permanent post under him is Chris Armas, Ralf Rangnick’s
assistant at Manchester United. Marsch has been pleased with Jackson’s input,
though, and is likely to be open to him continuing in his current job.
Taylor was a coach at Sunderland before joining Leeds to
manage their loan strategy last August and he admitted this week that his work
with the under-23s made the idea of an extended spell in charge tempting. “I
was only out of front line football for seven or eight months (after leaving
Sunderland) so it was easy to slip back into the routine of being on the grass
and preparing for games,” Taylor said. “But my main focus is on getting the
season finished and keeping us in the division. Once that’s done I’ll sit down
with Adam (Underwood, Leeds’ academy manager) and Victor (Orta, Leeds’ director
of football).”
Leeds, though, might see more value in returning Taylor to a
loan manager job which is likely to be busier in the year ahead. Bielsa was
resistant to sending out development players on temporary deals, preferring to
keep them at Thorp Arch irrespective of how much first-team football they were
playing. Cody Drameh is an isolated example of an under-23 playing elsewhere
and only then because he went against Bielsa’s wishes by insisting on taking an
offer from Cardiff City. Leeds rejected numerous other inquiries, including
more than one for Crysencio Summerville and an approach from Wigan Athletic for
midfielder Sean McGurk. Lewis Bate and Cresswell have also been the subject of
external interest.
In the coming transfer window, Leeds will give more
consideration to loan bids for their under-23s, with the aim of them playing as
much senior football as Drameh has at Cardiff. Bielsa liked to mix the first
team and development squads, regularly creating large training groups out of
both, but the club have reverted to a more conventional set-up under Marsch,
with clearer lines drawn between them.
The number of academy players who are in with the first team
— players like Cresswell, Summerville, Joe Gelhardt and Sam Greenwood — is
smaller. Some, like 16-year-old Archie Gray, have gone back to an academy
programme. Marsch intends to be more hands-off than Bielsa when it comes to
picking line-ups and dictating how the academy ranks train day to day, although
they will stick to a uniform tactical plan. “People here have been receptive to
my philosophy,” Marsch said, “but I’ve been encouraging them to think that it’s
their team. Each team has to have its own identity but think within the
construct of how we’re playing football as a club.”
There is, generally, a good level of patience and
understanding among Leeds’ development squad players. Bielsa gave Cresswell his
Premier League debut in September but the 19-year-old said this week that he
would only class himself as a first-team player “when I’ve played about 50
games. I wouldn’t say I’m a first-team player now”. The England Under-21
international has played less than 1000 minutes at club level this season, the
equivalent of 10 90-minute appearances. Leeds see him as a future starter at
centre-back but will want him to play more next term, either with them or at
another club on loan.
In the meantime, academy recruitment will continue as it has
over the past four years, at a constant rate. Leeds are one of the teams
tracking Aberdeen defender Calvin Ramsey, a teenager who has built up 31
appearances domestically and in the Europa Conference League and would not take
long to move into first-team contention. Liverpool also plan to bid for the
18-year-old, a rising star north of the border. Leeds are sticking to their
guns by investing in players with potential, though the pressure to marry
academy deals with significant improvement to Marsch’s squad is more intense
than ever after a long fight with relegation.
That fight is still not won and as a result, there was no
Gelhardt or Greenwood with the under-23s last night, both of them saved by
Marsch for Monday’s Premier League match at Crystal Palace. “From a selfish
point of view, I want all of the lads every week,” Taylor said. “But the
reality is, success for us is having none of them because it means they’re with
the first team instead.” Mateo Joseph drew first blood after six minutes but
Leeds got stuck in an early pattern of allowing City in behind their
full-backs, too easy to unpick. Kayky took one chance and Cole Palmer took
another, two near-identical finishes steered inside the same post.
City would have liked it to flow like that all night but
Leeds were feisty, energised and, from the champions’ point of view, an unrelenting
pain in the neck. Helped by referee Andrew Miller dealing with two manic fouls
by City’s goalkeeper, Cieran Slicker, with a solitary yellow card, the
scoreline held at 2-1 until Liam Delap banged in a deflected third in the 89th
minute.
“We’ve gone toe-to-toe with the champions and if
you’re a neutral who doesn’t know who’s who, I don’t think you’d have known
who’s at the top and who’s near the bottom,” Taylor said. City’s manager, Brian
Barry-Murphy, told Taylor he was bewildered by the attendance but there is
devotion behind Leeds’ under-23s, inside the club and on the streets, and
nothing about last night will turn that interest off.
