Jesse Marsch has wiped the slate clean – there is a fresh feel to his Leeds - The Athletic 8/7/22

By Phil Hay

It felt a little like Leeds United in the old routine last weekend as Patrick Bamford scored in a 1-0 win over Stoke City. A behind-closed-doors game at Stoke’s training ground gave Leeds the opportunity to shake off rust and Bamford the chance to feel the finishing touch again.

There are numerous facets to the club’s pre-season but clearing heads and starting again is definitely one of them. The year behind them took its pound of flesh, leaving no one untouched and the entire dressing room yearning for respite and a reset. Bamford, because of injuries, has not been scoring goals since December. Leeds, for a multitude of reasons, are fortunate to be in the Premier League. Jesse Marsch survived an uneasy phase of his job as head coach and there was no time wasted in packing away the mess it all entailed.

Liam Cooper was a good example of how time moves on. The day after Leeds fended off relegation at Brentford, he was off to Las Vegas for a stag do with a group of friends. “I’m not one to celebrate staying in a league but the relief was unbelievable,” he said. There was international duty with Scotland, his wedding in Ibiza and then, this Monday gone, the resumption of training with Leeds.

The break went by in a flash but still, the reality of how close the club had been to the edge on May 22 lingered. “You sober up and you start to realise how much it impacted on everyone,” Cooper said. “You just don’t want to be in that situation again.”

Saying that and making sure the border to the EFL is more distant next season are two very different things but Leeds have made no apology in looking forward this summer.

10' Goal! A quick free-kick from Harrison, Firpo rolls it through to Koch, who taps it in! 1-0 pic.twitter.com/yVAN6tRrQw

— Leeds United (@LUFC) July 7, 2022

There has been little said publicly by senior figures at the club about the near-miss with relegation and they were signing players, Brenden Aaronson first, within days of last season finishing. Their squad are done with the usual bleep tests, in which Aaronson gave perennial front-runner Jamie Shackleton a good run for his money and last night saw their first public friendly, against Blackpool in York. The match was a little window into what has and might yet change.

Marsch’s first 12 games as head coach, dominated though they were by the priority of surviving at all costs, were a search in vain for a definitive style. In retrospect, even Marsch questioned whether the situation he inherited gave him much chance of establishing one, though he was steadfast in telling staff at Thorp Arch that when it came to the crunch, Leeds would not go down.

But pre-season, minus the precarious weight of a grim league table, is as good a time as any for him to nail everything down. He has five experienced signings through the door, and six in total including Darko Gyabi. Three of those players he knows inside out and they, likewise, know his way of thinking. This must seem like year zero, a clean slate after what went before.

The next stage for Marsch is making those pieces fall into place. He is renowned as a 4-2-2-2 man and Cooper said during a round of media interviews on Monday that in his estimation, Leeds have a squad who can make that formation work. But the club ran through several others in Marsch’s early stint in charge, settling more often than not on 4-2-3-1, and the success of the season ahead is tied to Marsch’s ability to find a pattern which is compatible with the Premier League, suited to the range of players in his squad and takes hold in a way that convinces those players to believe in it.

Leeds fell into a 4-2-3-1 from the off against Blackpool, with established Marsch traits in the structure of their play. Junior Firpo said later he thought that formation was how Marsch intended to go from here. Most of the width came from the full-backs, Firpo down the left in particular, and set pieces showed signs of work.

The pressing and counter-pressing Marsch learned through his Red Bull education was employed with the energy one of Leeds’ new signings, Tyler Adams, talked about after joining the club on Wednesday. “Any synonym of aggressive,” Adams said. “That’s Jesse’s style of play.” And there is no one in the squad more au fait with Marsch’s style than Adams.

It was pre-season but, for all that, it was fresh and sharp enough. Marc Roca’s pass into Firpo’s overlap gave Joe Gelhardt a finish which was ruled out for offside. Jack Harrison’s pass towards another Firpo run gave Robin Koch a finish which nobody was disallowing.

The summer can distort the appearance of teams who look unrecognisable when the competitive games get going but it was hard to deny that Leeds were drilled, like a squad who better understood what was being asked of them.

The mood of the crowd gave the sense that grievances had been aired, fights had been fought and with all that done, the time was right to let it all go. There was warm applause for Marsch beforehand, which beat the reaction towards him when Leeds were clutching at straws in their penultimate home game last season.

There was a decent evening for Firpo who, during 12 months in England, has not had many of those. The second goal was his, a glancing header from a corner, and a third came from Rodrigo, smashed high into the net after a lovely take-down by Gelhardt.

Mateo Fernandez, one of 11 substitutes, made it 4-0 shortly before full-time. Leeds were almost out of the habit of playing 90 minutes without aging drastically.

Those 90 minutes seemed to make the point that Marsch’s fraught introduction at Elland Road had not shaken him out of doing what he does or frightened him off the methods footballers like Adams highlight when they are asked to describe Marsch’s team.

“Aggressive, aggressive,” Adams said again. “Just non-stop. He loves high-intensity games.”

Marsch, for his part, was pleased to be at it again with clear water in front of him. “The first thing I said to the group on day one was that I’ve never been more excited to get back to work,” he said. “I’ve said from the beginning, I’m really hopeful to be here for a long time.”