Quarterback Required - The Square Ball 11/10/22

FINDING SOLUTIONS

Written by: Steven York

If Leeds United’s season was a Hollywood blockbuster, this would be the moment where our charismatic American lead character smirks as he declares, “This is why I get paid the big bucks.” The role of head coach is to solve problems that the players can’t. To have the experience, perspective, and oversight to make tactical choices that address troubling themes, providing the players with the tools to succeed in difficult moments. Only, Leeds aren’t succeeding at addressing themes, and it’s creating many difficult moments.

The criticism of Marcelo Bielsa’s football was the inability to adapt to circumstance. Plan A was to play Bielsaball. Plan B was to do Plan A better. That reckless abandon sometimes worked, and it was beautiful. When it didn’t work, the scoreline was often grim. If Jesse Marsch was brought to the club to capitalise on the more energetic elements of Bielsa’s tactics while instilling a more measured, pragmatic approach, then we have to concede that in this game of fine margins, it isn’t quite working.

Not that there’s any criticism for the way in which Leeds blew Chelsea apart, but that performance feels a long time ago after another game in which we dominated the early stages but failed to capitalise. The opponent, Crystal Palace in this instance, settled into the game and found ways to play around Leeds. The momentum violently swung in their favour and the loss felt inevitable throughout much of the second half. You could attribute this to a difficult day at a stadium where few teams expect to pick up points, but there are familiar themes developing.

The Aston Villa game was another good example of how Leeds don’t seem to develop a way of playing that fits the contest they’re in. Steven Gerrard’s side clearly came into the fixture intending to frustrate, presumably because it’s been so clear in previous games how much that rattles us. But an appalling performance from Stuart Attwell aside, isn’t it our job to overcome whatever tactic our opponent deploys? Why is it that we seem incapable of adapting to the evolving and fluid nature of a football match? It feels like we often start okay, but if we fail to score multiple goals in the early stages, our opponent will find their feet and nullify what we’re doing. Given our defensive frailties, if the momentum swings too much from attack to defence, it’s only a matter of time before we concede.

Marsch says we aren’t being dangerous enough, and he’s right. I suspect there are plenty of factors contributing to this problem. But for now let’s just look at Marc Roca and Tyler Adams.

I think Roca and Adams are good signings who have taken on the ‘midfield guardian’ role we worried would be completely unaddressed with Kalvin Phillips leaving. But we haven’t suitably replaced the quarterback elements of Kalvin’s game. Those brilliant, laser-guided diagonals to advanced wide players or incisive balls through the middle from deep just aren’t happening as much. Roca and Adams are shepherding the midfield acceptably, but seem to recycle possession back to defence far more often. This creates moments when the centre-back lumps the ball up the pitch, inevitably losing possession, or it is distributed to the full-backs.

This puts a lot of onus on full-backs to start much of our attacking movement, which is a lot of pressure to place on Rasmus Kristensen (a new signing who is still adapting) and Pascal Struijk (who is not a full-back at all). The full-backs can either work with their more advanced teammate, or turn inside. The route inside will often be met by Adams or Roca recycling the ball back to Illan Meslier or the nearest centre-back (restarting the whole cycle), or a pass up to whoever is our attacking midfielder for the day. In the likely event that it’s Rodrigo, he’ll either come so deep with his back to goal that all he can do is recycle the ball to Adams or Roca, or it’ll just be sent wide again.

This is what makes Mateusz Klich so impactful in midfield — he is far more attacking in his mindset. He’s a lot harder to play against as a result. I’m not downplaying how important it is that the Roca-Adams combo puts in key tackles and wins back possession, but it’s what happens next that needs work. When you look at our 2020/21 season, Klich and Phillips were seventh and eleventh respectively among central midfielders making key passes in games. Phillips was sixth for long key passes, whereas this season Roca is the only player in the middle to make one, ranking him twentieth out of 24 players.

Statistically, for long key passes we’re ranked thirteenth overall in the league at the moment, whereas in 2020/21 we were fifth. Whereas for short key passes, we’re basically performing the same (eighth vs seventh). We’re not spreading the play with the same expansive imagination as we used to. We’re intercepting more balls than 20/21, we’re making more tackles, we’re making more clearances. We’re far less likely to lose possession through an unsuccessful touch, but far more likely to be dispossessed.

But the transfer window is closed and Leeds go marching on. Pressure will mount on Marsch now, because if the role of the head coach is to find tactical solutions to problems on the pitch, it’s this area where we’re suffering the most. We can’t just be aggressive, we have to be good. We can’t just be ‘in the game’, we have to actually win some games.

We like to think we’ve become much more tactically astute since becoming pupils of Bielsa, naturally taking far more interest in the academic side of football. But in terms of where we are now, it’s hard to envisage how we change what we’re doing to make it suddenly work. Answers on a postcard, addressed to J.Marsch.