Big questions for Big Sam as he plots Leeds miracle: Risk Rodrigo? System change? - The Athletic 25/5/23

By Phil Hay

The priority for Leeds United’s medical team this week was to find a way to patch up Rodrigo and there is something fitting about the club blundering towards relegation with half of their squad either absent or thereabouts.

Sunday’s game against Tottenham would be ominous enough with a full complement of fit players — roll a six and trust in the possibility that everybody else rolls a one — but Leeds in the mud with injuries all over the place is the epitome of their regression, the Charge of the Light Brigade in sporting form. Patrick Bamford is almost certainly out. They will try to hold Rodrigo together with string. No Tyler Adams and no Luis Sinisterra. Just another day at Elland Road.

The penny, you suspect, dropped quickly with Sam Allardyce about the resources on offer to him and how they married up with the push for survival in the Premier League but last Sunday, after a 3-1 defeat at West Ham United, the reality of the tools at his disposal truly dawned. Bamford had limped off with a pulled hamstring. Rodrigo had muddled through the second half with a sore plantar fascia. Leeds had played tepidly and a magician would have been hard pressed. “We might have to play a completely different system,” Allardyce said, trying to visualise a performance against Spurs. Which is not exactly the optimal scenario for a match which might relegate you.

A complete change of system most likely goes away if Rodrigo can get himself on the pitch but Allardyce’s comments post-match in London, a fairly resigned assessment of where Leeds were and what chance they had, was a continuation of his habit of telling the truth. For him, at 68 and on a contract which ends as rapidly as it started, there is no great risk in speaking openly and no fear of upsetting anyone. However the job done by him at Leeds comes to be regarded — ineffectual, impossible, a stupidly thankless task — his stint should kill the theory that punting on a new head coach with four fixtures left is going to save you. That probably applies regardless of what goes on against Spurs.

More than once Allardyce has thrown the decision to buy Georginio Rutter in January under a bus, questioning the club’s record signing’s suitability for the Premier League and saying that in spite of Rutter being on the bench last weekend, there was no spare centre-forward to work with, hence why Rodrigo was left to hobble about. Lodge that in the drawer marked ‘damning’. “Strength in depth of the squad,” he replied when asked what the biggest issue was defensively and Leeds look evermore like a club who had ideas about long-term potential, ideas about resale value but no real skill in actually building a team.

That the squad is forever riddled with injuries is a problem in itself, and the current situation is a case in point. But there has been no framework in which changes to their line-up take hold seamlessly or one player looks as capable as another, faces interchanging like the plan is second-nature. Take the defence at West Ham alone: a centre-back at left-back, a right-back at centre-back, a centre-back in midfield and a limping Rodrigo preferred to any of the available substitutes. Allardyce was not happy with the impact of those who came off the bench and perhaps he could have made different decisions. Up front, it might have helped if Sonny Perkins had made the 20, instead of travelling and being left out. But touting Perkins as the solution without him having played once in the league is mythical dreaming. It all feels like throwing paint into the wind and hoping the splatters produce a Picasso.

As for a change of system, it is difficult on the evidence of the games under Allardyce so far to see how that happens. He is not, with the greatest of respect to him, a coach who built his empire on false nines or line-ups without centre-forwards. In the moments this season when Leeds have tried to use someone like Brenden Aaronson in that position, they have been wholly inadequate anyway. Leeds are feeding on low possession rates and low passing rates and in the end, conventional football needs conventional footballers; the squarest of pegs in the squarest of holes. The temptation to risk Rodrigo will be there this Sunday because Allardyce clearly sees no other suitable option. But it is never good to be starting a do-or-die day on the back foot.

So what chance when the ball starts to roll against Tottenham? The only counterpoint to the assumption that Leeds are doomed, the best form of straw-clutching, is that so many people said the same thing this time last year. On the trains to Brentford 12 months ago, it was quiet, there was trepidation, there was almost resignation. But it was different back then too. Leeds had only one club to get beyond in the table. There were circumstances in which a draw would have been enough. And it was not unrealistic to think that a newly confident Newcastle might help by winning away at Burnley. The stars had the scope to align. There was simply the threat that Leeds would render all that meaningless by losing to Brentford themselves.

This time it will take a win and nothing else. And then it will depend on two results elsewhere. And then it might depend on goal difference. And having conceded 74 times this season, Leeds have not exactly taken the initiative on that front. You know how it will be on Sunday. Come the minutes beforehand, that part of the brain which plays out the best-case scenario will get going and tease you. It will provide one last flush of optimism because you never say never and football can be weird. It would not be the miracle of all miracles if Leeds find a way to stay up. But you would look back and marvel that it ever happened.