Once again at Leeds, we are back to Bamford… - The Athletic 18/10/22

By Phil Hay

“Of course, if Bamford was here then his presence would be valued. But our drop is not linked to him.”

The unmistakable language of Marcelo Bielsa from October 2021, when his favoured centre-forward was in the treatment room, is to remember how long Patrick Bamford has been the focus of the same conversation. Bamford injured, Bamford not finishing, Bamford’s goals the key to everything. So much at Leeds United is framed around him, the way it has been since the day he signed.

The club hang on to his goals because they so often seem to need them, hence the questions Bielsa fielded while Leeds were toiling 12 months ago. Then, in January, Bamford was slogging through long shooting drills at Thorp Arch, trying to get fit, get sharp and find the invisible groove only a striker can feel. The motivation for those drills was that, once again, Leeds were counting on his finishing touch. And it was in those drills that Bamford fatefully aggravated a tendon in one foot.

That injury and others before and since have wiped out 12 months of his career. They have wiped out the World Cup too, although any player who goes as long as him without completing a full competitive game is likely to have their priorities in order and think more, as Bamford said himself, about “where the next goal is coming from”. His 45 minutes against Arsenal on Sunday was the perfect depiction of a striker who would take one from anywhere, begging for the stars to align. It would help him, it would help his club and it would pack away an internal argument about the transfer window until another day.

Leeds’ intransigence about perceived weaknesses in their ranks of centre-forwards — weaknesses that have been shown to be there — is moot at this stage. No proven striker arrived in the window and there is nothing they can do about that now. They are not close enough to January to muddle through up front and not well-placed enough in the Premier League to take the hit of a shortage of goals in the meantime. Arsenal was a warning that either Bamford starts scoring or the run-up to the World Cup backs Leeds into a corner, the boomerang finding him once more.

Sunday underlined the fix that Marsch is in. He has a more durable and match-fit forward in Rodrigo but a far better tactical match in Bamford, the No 9 who has always looked closer to the brand of striker Leeds need in this team. Rodrigo’s misplaced pass leading to Arsenal’s winning goal was a decisive moment, but away from that error there was a sharp contrast between Leeds pre- and post-half-time.

Before the interval, they constrained Arsenal with good shape and intelligent pressing, Rodrigo’s aberration aside. But with Bamford on the pitch at the start of the second half, they were able to attack and assault Arsenal in waves, with pressure that kept coming. Bamford did not score but he looked like he might, building impetus and probing deeply. The game changed dramatically.

There is, quite clearly, a difference in the ways Leeds look for Bamford and Rodrigo. On Sunday, so many of the passes to Bamford were progressive and aimed forward, invited by the runs he tries to make through the gaps between centre-backs and full-backs. Rodrigo can be a very different type of outlet, inclined to drop deeper and receive more lateral passes or distribution which goes backwards. The first image below is of the balls played to Bamford on Sunday. The second is of the balls played to Rodrigo. It is not difficult to understand why Bamford, even with fewer passes in his direction, could pose a greater threat in a team that tries to search for bursting runs behind the opposition defence.

At the end of Sunday’s game, Marsch could hear himself saying what strikers hate people saying about them: that they did everything right, apart from actually scoring — and he was not wrong. Bamford’s movement was good. His positioning was good. The timing of his sprints and the direction of them made Arsenal’s back four lose their shape. He was met by a couple of good saves from Aaron Ramsdale too but nothing gave Bamford the rush of finishing. And nothing has given him that rush since Brentford at home in December, his last competitive goal.

The effect on confidence was there in his penalty against Arsenal, misplaced by a player who, despite his role, has taken relatively few in his career. “With the penalty, it winds up being more of a psychological issue than a quality issue,” Marsch said and on the basis that Bamford has been on the Penrose stairs for so long, no doubt it is. Numbers start to claw at the mind, like the current statistic of eight big chances falling to him without him taking one.

His history has shown he is prone to barren runs but also that one goal can lead to a few quickly. He can be streaky, and that seems to be Marsch’s hope — that the first successful finish opens the floodgates. For all the criticism of Bamford’s profligacy over the years, it is inconceivable that he can do as much right in the build-up play as he did on Sunday without a goal arriving. Another performance like that at Leicester City on Thursday and the dam should burst. Any meaningful return of goals from him between now and the World Cup should keep results in check, allowing Leeds to reflect and take stock. On Sunday’s evidence, Marsch must persist.

Where the club went wrong in the summer was in overestimating the productivity they would get from Bamford and Rodrigo this season. One had been grappling with fitness for months, the other offered no guarantee of anything, and behind them was a gap that stretched to academy level. Marsch has goalscoring under-21s he could punt on — Joe Gelhardt, Mateo Fernandez, Sonny Perkins — but nothing in between. There is no striker in the middle ground between ample experience and very little. It was the question that needed to be answered in August: who, realistically, was going to do the business at No 9? Confidence outweighed concern when concern was being legitimately expressed.

It is white noise now because Marsch has only these tools, which have to work for him. The weekend after next is Liverpool away, his 25th game as head coach and eight months since his appointment — and at no point has he had a prime Bamford to lean on. But still it is the 29-year-old on everyone’s lips, the name mentioned at every press conference, the enigmatic focus but a player who has been through questionable patches before and come out the other side of them. There are goals in him, as other seasons have shown. Leeds have little choice but to find them.