Georginio Rutter offers Leeds a glimpse of a future primed with forward options - The Athletic 29/1/23

By Phil Hay

In surpassing Rodrigo as Leeds United’s record signing, the biggest compliment Georginio Rutter could pay the Spaniard was to tell him that he was his go-to striker every time he played FIFA on his games console. Rutter’s preference, whichever club he adopted, was 4-4-2 with him and Rodrigo up front — computer animation about to mimic real life.

Rodrigo was reined in at Accrington Stanley yesterday, limited to 21 minutes on the pitch as Leeds went west in the FA Cup. He and Rutter will dovetail properly in some form at a later date, possibly at Nottingham Forest in a week’s time. Rutter’s debut in the fourth-round tie, a £30million ($37.2million) investment unleashed, was in tandem with Patrick Bamford and others, the latest chapter in the story about the number of attacking assets competing for favour.

The headcount has changed for a club who used to sweat about a shortage of No 9s.

Leeds went big on Rutter, bigger than the £27million spent on Rodrigo two and a half years ago, and the first glimpse of him as an unused substitute last Sunday saw him wrapped up in a blanket, resisting the biting cold, as Leeds and Brentford drew 0-0. Accrington, deep in hilly Lancashire, was a fresh four degrees when it welcomed him but Jesse Marsch hoped the forward’s first appearance would begin the process of lighting a fire under him. Far from a FIFA experience, this was English football in red-raw form and Rutter had a taste for it.

Acclimatising to the weather is a minor consideration in comparison to a record purchase adjusting to the club who broke that record to buy him.

Leeds gave him a fortnight to settle in without the need to actually play, Marsch’s way of trying to make sure that the public’s introduction to Rutter was a flattering one, but neither manager nor forward wanted the period of integration to take any longer than it had to. Hitting the ground running is the name of the game and there were little chats in the warm-up yesterday between Rutter and Bamford and Rutter and Marc Roca, arm movements and gestures about where he should run, which areas he should attack and how they would all stay on the same page; the teething process aimed at sharpening Rutter’s bite.

Everyone, it seems, has something to play for at Leeds, from the owner and the head coach down to individual members of the dressing room. Roca is getting the vibes from new Spain coach Luis de la Fuente, his old manager at under-21 level, that a first international call-up might be on its way. Bamford, after so many injuries, is working to redefine himself as Bamford circa the summer of 2021, when England took a shine to him.

Rutter has a big fee to his name and, for all that he played his price tag down, can only be human in wanting people to see why he cost so much. It is, invariably, the first question that follows: is a marquee recruit worth the cash?

An immediate answer was there for him with his very first touch at Accrington, a scuffed finish in the eighth minute sent wide from a position that was begging him to score. It was a wasted chance but one of several instances too in which Rutter’s running and presence helped Leeds connect attacks and cause trouble, drifting off the right in that instance to invite a pass as Luis Sinisterra cut in from the other side.

Marsch has shown no sign of falling for 4-4-2 — 4-2-2-2 is the American’s standard route to two up front — but Rutter has the speed and the running power for the wings, even if he thinks he is most comfortable centrally. It was 4-2-3-1 yesterday, with him on one side.

Leeds did not get going properly until Jack Harrison, with talk of Leicester City’s attention clinging to him, cracked in the sort of finish he has up his sleeve, a clean strike from outside the box which, aside from opening the scoring in the 23rd minute, served to make Leeds think about whether losing him would be prudent.

They needed that goal and it brought Rutter into the game, giving him more space for expression.

A bring-down-and-go let him burn around Doug Tharme on the left and nearly lay on a sitter for Bamford. A scrap with Ethan Hamilton created a good chance for Roca. Sinisterra was not far away from turning in Rutter’s low cross after the Frenchman dropped off Patrick Bamford and took up possession on the corner of Accrington’s box. Shortly before half-time, his pass from halfway ended with Sinisterra cracking a shot off a post.

For most of his 75 minutes, Rutter looked like a footballer with whom Marsch could do a variety of things. He came deep with his back to goal to connect the flow of possession, not always a strength of this Leeds team, and he was denied when goalkeeper Toby Savin read his effort from distance and turned it wide, again after Rutter strong-armed Hamilton and held him off. A better chance came shortly before Marsch replaced him, with Rutter bringing down a killer ball from Harrison and shooting into the side-netting.

Marsch had talked about the forward’s two-footed ability, how natural it appeared to be, and the 20-year-old did not seem out of place on either side of the pitch. It was just a deadly finish that eluded him.

Accrington made Leeds work, as feisty as they had to be, but a 3-1 win took Leeds into the fifth round, an overdue appearance at that stage of the FA Cup. All three of their goals were skilful in their own way, Junior Firpo and Sinisterra finishing off the other two, and Marsch mitigated the risk of an upset by naming a sensible team from which quality was likely to tell.

Rutter will see the standard of opposition rise sharply in the month ahead, far above the levels of League One, but his success in getting himself going on the sort of day when Leeds have been prone to embarrassing themselves in the past was a satisfying sub-plot.

In the midst of everything, Bamford found his swagger with trademark runs into the channels and a clever, dragged assist for Firpo’s effort on 66 minutes. “Patrick looks like himself,” Marsch said. “Seventy-five minutes for him after what he’s been through in the past year is gigantic.”

Willy Gnonto did not travel, suspended and given a weekend to breathe, and Crysencio Summerville — boasting four goals in his last six Premier League appearances — is almost fit enough to train fully again.

With Rutter up and running and the Premier League awaiting him, Marsch has to decide what people in Leeds must be debating hard: from this crop, which front three or four to pick?