Jesse Marsch before Wolves says he will be your father figure - The Square Ball 4/8/22

YOUR PREACHER TEACHER

Written by: Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman

We’ve got transfers, or at least some of them, and new kits, whether you can buy them or want to or not. We’ve got people confused about newfangled tickets and a fixture list already being transformed by the broadcasters (and other clubs’ tawdry Europa League affairs) into months of Sundays. What’s missing, ahead of Saturday’s big kick-off? On Thursday morning you could have said, Jesse Marsch’s pre-match press conference, but by afternoon, we got that too.

He began with his usual rundown of injury updates, spoke about his sadness at letting Raphinha and particularly Kalvin Phillips go, his belief in the new guys, and gave some hints about the season ahead without getting too caught up in making predictions or promises no football manager can keep. If there’s been a theme developing through Jesse’s press work this summer, it’s that this coming season Leeds can play under him without the “stress” that characterised his first three months; but he modified that slightly today, because in the Premier League, stress is never far away.

“It’s not a relegation battle. But I know the games are so damn good, right, and the opponents, like my respect of Wolves [bit about how good they were against us last season] … But you can call it stress, you can call it pressure. It’s just the league is so good, and it demands the absolute best out of you as a manager and as a team. And so I’m just totally focussed on everything to try to get our team ready to have a good first step in the season.”

“It’s too early to start, you know, talking about goals [for the season]. But, you know, certainly we want to finish better than we did last year. And I think the key in that is just to have a good start. I’m really happy that we play the first match at home in front of our fans. I know there’ll be anticipation, but they’ll be supportive. I know that. And so we have to come out and play on the front foot. I think we have to play aggressively and I think we have to play well, with quality and with confidence too, to honour what the fans are going to bring to the stadium and to honour what we believe is going to be a good year for us.”

This next bit, given we sold our two best players, was a bold statement, when Phil Hay asked if our strongest team now is better than last season’s:

“Yes, I believe our strongest line up is better this year than it was last season, and mostly because there’s more clarity as to the way we want to play the game.”

Let’s hope Barcelona don’t try bidding for our clarity. Marsch says that has been helped by the time he had last season:

“Well, listen, there was a lot of talk that that wasn’t exactly the way we wanted to play it. Yeah, it wasn’t. But we made steps along the way and we introduced a lot of new topics and tactics and we challenged the players to adapt quickly, but we didn’t throw a million things at them. We wanted to be just good at the simple things, we wanted to adjust some things defensively, we wanted to be harder to play against. It wasn’t anywhere near a finished product at the end of last year, but it allowed us to, I think, start the process of this season affirmatively and clearly. And even when I talked about, the idea was, me to come in the summer, I don’t think we’d be where we are as a team right now if I would have come in summer, versus when I did come.”

Where Marsch thinks Leeds now are as a team was all wrapped up in this bit:

“I think we’ve been able to use the time in pre-season to work in a little bit more stress free environment. Obviously, there’s always pressures to improve and grow, and we know once the season starts that the games demand the absolute best from you.

“But we’ve been able to invest heavily in tactics that we think are important, set piece ideas, the idea of what we want this environment to be like from a team perspective, from a day to day work perspective, from a physical [perspective] — we’ve even made some adjustments of what’s going on here at Thorp Arch, to really just be more efficient and clean with everything we do.

“So of course when new managers come in, they bring a lot of new ideas and new styles of play and everything. I think that we have made incredible progress in the last six weeks and I think that, yeah, we’re going to see a better version of what I would like us to be on match day, which is exciting for me. And certainly some of the additions have been important for that. But I think also the players that have been here have now had more time to work, more intensively and minutely on the details, so that we can now transform ourselves into what we want to be.”

New players though, Jesse. The window is still open, feed us new players. Transfers don’t seem to be such a favourite subject of Marsch, “because it takes away attention from the group that we have here right now”, but I think he knows he’s swinging against an update-hungry tide, there. Thanks, Fabrizio! Anyway, it sounds like we’re getting a new goalie next week and then we’ll just have to wait and see:

“We’ve done a really good job with the guys that we’ve brought in so far. And I think we’re really trying to, again, be very precise with exactly who we want and what we need for the next steps in this transfer window. So we have some time. I think we’ll probably make one addition next week. And then we’re continuing to look at what else is out there.”

The expected goalie news is from Graham Smyth at the YEP, and although Marsch says Kristoffer Klaesson is available for the weekend despite an ankle knock, “there is an argument” for bringing in experienced back-up, as long as Leeds can “make sure that that person will strengthen us and not necessarily create friction within that young goalkeeper corps.” So not Rebekah Vardy, then.

Marsch feels he’s getting everything he needs from Andrea Radrizzani and the board for the transfer market, and has “expressed almost daily my appreciation to Andrea for his support”, which sounds a bit annoying for both of them. That support has not surprised Jesse, and not only in the transfer market:

“It was easy for me to see from the first day that I came in that the club and the people here at Thorp Arch and at Elland Road had supported Marcelo 100%, all in, they did everything they could…”

(I mean, they had just sacked Bielsa, but I guess he means before that)

“…and that was from support staff to coaching staff to the players, everyone. And so I took that as a real positive, an opportunity for myself.”

On injuries, everyone sounds near and ahead of schedule, or in Stuart Dallas’ case, not near but ahead of schedule and doing well. There were two surprise mentions. Mateusz Bogusz, the Polish Messi who did his cruciate just when his loan in Ibiza was coming to its warm wintry best, is someone Marsch is excited about working with to see if he can fit into the group, perhaps because Jesse is very good at saying his name: he really pronounced the ‘oosh’ in ‘Boh-goosh’ and it sounded great.

The other mention was for youth goalie Dani van den Heuvel. There were a few stories in the Netherlands about this when it happened back in June, but without much detail — a car with Dani, three Under-19s teammates and a member of staff was involved in an accident, leaving at least some of them hospitalised. Van den Heuvel, it now turns out, came off badly but is going to be okay:

“It was a pretty severe neck injury where he broke some vertebrae, so we were really worried about him, not even as a football injury but as a life situation, but he’s showing really good progress. He’s back in the gym, and we’ll be ramping him up over time, but it’s probably a couple of months before he’ll be eligible to be training and be ready to go.”

Here’s the full rundown on the other absent players:

Dan James is suspended for Wolves, but has asked to and will be playing ninety minutes for the Under-21s on Friday night

After injuring his achilles on a treadmill in summer, Liam Cooper is “finally” back on the pitch but won’t be available this weekend — Marsch is hopeful he’ll be in team training next week

Junior Firpo is ahead of schedule, “so we can be more aggressive with him” — I’m picturing them whacking him with a rolled up newspaper and shouting, ‘Just! Defend! Better!’ — but is still two or three weeks away from being available

Adam Forshaw is hoped for in training next week

Luke Ayling is ahead of schedule after his knee surgery, they’re not putting pressure on him (I guess because Rasmus has got things covered) but they’re hoping for him in training in a couple of weeks

Luis Sinisterra was on the pitch today looking good, hopefully available for next weekend

Stuart Dallas is “on track … looking better and better”. He was seen off crutches at the Cagliari game, which is great

Here’s the rest of what was discussed:

Speaking about Premier League players deciding to restrict how often they’ll take a knee to protest racial inequality this season, Jesse said, “I love the fact that there’s been an appreciation of diversity in our sport, which I think in our sport is the most unique of any in the world” and praised the Premier League for being “at the forefront of so many things”. “I think taking a knee was absolutely the right thing … whether we take a knee or not, I know here we have massive appreciation for all of the differences in the different kinds of people we have, and we enjoy that.”

He’s aware Wolves have been using a back four in pre-season, and playing with Podence further forward. “Their manager is very intelligent, has a lot of good tactical ideas, and they have an incredible player pool … I think we can really get an edge on set pieces, and we have to be really strong and clear with what our goals are in that phase of the game come Saturday.”

Patrick Bamford, “looks great. He looks fit. He’s psychologically incredibly excited. And I know we have a great player on our hands and then he’s only going to get better. Is he at 100%? Probably not quite yet, but he’s really really close.” He is fit enough that they’ve been working on more tactical ideas with him, which Marsch says were looking good against Cagliari

Marsch doesn’t see Joffy Gelhardt as Bamford’s competition — “I would call it more support than competition”. The Jofster can come off the bench “to help him”, or they can play together, or check these wild ideas — “I think Rodrigo can play as a striker as well. We know that’s not Dan’s [James] preferred position, but there’s different ways where we can play with nine, half-nine, two strikers, central ten”. That feels like saying a lot of numbers to try and avoid saying Dan James is still one of our strikers. If he keeps blasting the ball into the net, though, fine!

Pascal Struijk is doing a good job of learning the left-back jobs, and having him there can help with defending set-pieces and possibly leaving three back

Brenden Aaronson got named as another possibility as a striker, almost like we aren’t going to sign a new one after all. But this is more about his flexibility to play across the front. “Brenden’s work ethic is different than probably any player I’ve ever known. His ability to cover ground and his intelligence and ability to adapt is one of the best I’ve ever seen.”

Marsch is happy that being able to make five substitutions this season will give him more tactical flexibility, and more chances to develop players — he was pushing for it to be brought in

Near the end of the presser came the one part when our Jesse let himself go into a more philosophical mode. He’d already been asked about the sales of Phillips and Raphinha, and gave the usual answers, about how it’s sad to see them go but they leave with his best wishes and the money has improved the squad. Then he mentioned he’d been driving through the city, seen the mural on The Calls featuring Kalvin Phillips alongside Lucas Radebe and Albert Johanneson, and “it got me a little emotional, because I know what he means to this fan base and this community and not having him in our kit is not so easy to accept.” He was asked what those emotions were, and almost talked himself out of answering in full.

“Well, I mean, you know, when you’re…” then the steam went out of his words, and he waved a hand, and in a lower voice added, “I don’t know how much I want to go into this.” Then:

“But when I started, when I knew I wanted to be a coach, I thought it would be about tactics and competitiveness. And what I realised more and more is that the role of the father figure took the more prominent position in the way that I led, and it was mostly because I care for people.

“And I’ve said before for me this is a people business. In a stressful time, in a stressful twelve weeks, we, all of us, invested everything we had.

“And along with that comes a real, I think, affection, for the people, and for the situation, and a fondness to the fact that we did it together, that we really achieved our goal of last year, we did it, it wasn’t any one person, it was really a group, and everybody sacrificed everything they had to try to get there.

“And so, yeah, when I see the mural of Kalvin, I think it’s hard not seeing him here every day, and it’s hard not being attached with a young man that you really like, that you think has high potential, and that you want to really see be successful. And so now I just have to do it a little bit more from afar — and see him in an ugly colour blue.”

Not a good day to be getting into kit criticism, Jesse!