The Leeds United summer transfer window Jesse Marsch deserves and a Whites cautionary tale - YEP 3/6/22
The transfer window opens in a week’s time and Leeds United, as the meme says, are ready to get hurt again.
By Graham Smyth
Brenden Aaronson hot-footing it to Elland Road with the
season barely concluded and a deal for Rasmus Kristensen nearing completion
before signings can be officially ratified suggests that Leeds are not intent
on letting the grass grow under their feet. No one is in any doubt as to the
scale of the rebuild required, so why not crack on?
Videos of Aaronson doing the business for the United States
Men’s National Team did the rounds this week and should Kristensen produce
anything worthy of a highlight reel in Denmark’s four June fixtures, you can be
sure its airplay in the West Yorkshire region will be substantial.
You can gen up on new signings all you like - read the
stats, watch the YouTube compilations - but they still represent the unknown, a
blank slate onto which possibility, hope and optimism flood to generate
excitement.
Clubs can play it cool and tut at the media’s obsession with
transfer rumours while deals are being worked on and yet, when the pen hits the
paper, it’s the clubs themselves playing right into it with their grand
announcements and social-media content.
Leeds United setting quite a pace in the transfer market. Hoping to finalise at least one more by the end of next week.#Lufc https://t.co/dTEJNgwPsh
— Leeds United News (@LeedsUnitedYEP) June 2, 2022
No one wants the press to talk about their business until
the deal is done and then they want everyone talking about it, so it’s never
just a picture of a fella holding a scarf in front of the main stand these
days, there are videos and graphics, bells and whistles. That’s because
transfer business can do wonders for the mood around a club, particularly after
a disappointing season like the one Leeds endured.
No football takes place in the summer but you can still earn
plaudits and give the impression of a winning side, beating other clubs to
signatures and emerging victorious from 50:50s with agents or rivals’ owners.
The game outside the game is there to be won and there’s momentum to be gained.
If the Whites fanbase has learned anything over the past two
campaigns, though, it’s that judgement on transfer windows should be reserved.
That fact won’t preclude celebration and fanfare if new arrivals are considered
shiny enough and nor should it - the celebration police are hellbent on
curtailing joy in every area of the game but you take your buzz where you can
find it.
However, no one with an association to Elland Road will be
completely sold on the idea that any new player, regardless of price tag or
pedigree, is exactly the right player until he’s proved it on the pitch.
Every club has its cautionary tales in that regard and Leeds
are no exception, but the signing of Rodrigo is perhaps the most prominent case
of hindsight shedding a different light on the response to an arrival. One
particular Leeds fan who on the day of Rodrigo’s unveiling took to social media
to laud the club’s decision makers for a ‘beauty’ of a deal later went on to
describe him as a talented player but a ‘mess of a signing’. This fan was far
from alone in changing tune because the combination of a £27m fee, 22 Spain
caps and the knowledge of what Marcelo Bielsa did with mid-table Championship
players was always going to create expectation. The reality was that Rodrigo
would go on to struggle with injuries, Covid-19 and not really finding his fit
or any sustained form in Bielsa’s system and, despite a short-lived renaissance
under Jesse Marsch, ended his second season without re-writing his Leeds United
history.
At 31, he will be hard pressed to do that now, although
Marsch has that staunch ‘whatever man, I believe’ attitude about him, which
makes it impossible to rule out a role for and perhaps even a contribution from
Rodrigo next term.
Something the Rodrigo story has taught Leeds fans is the
importance of signings being precisely the right ones for the manager’s style
of play, so expect the excitement and hype around any further arrivals to be
tempered or informed by that knowledge. Marsch has earned that, the right to
work with the appropriate tools. Whatever impression you formed during his
initial weeks at Elland Road, it cannot be denied that he took a huge risk in
commiting to the job early and working with another man’s squad.
He was reassured that Leeds were as all-in with him as he
was with them regardless of the outcome, but he’s been in the game long enough
to know that there are no guarantees and he could well have been sacrificing a
far more comfortable summer arrival and a chance to build his own thing. He
kept Leeds up with the squad he inherited and now deserves the opportunity to
put round pegs in each position. Aaronson and yet-to-sign Kristensen are both
players he has worked with so, while there can be no excuses if neither work
out as planned, there seems little reason why Leeds fans shouldn’t be
optimistic over those additions.