If Leeds are relegated, youth focus is key part of safety net so academy success is vital - The Athletic 11/5/23
By Phil Hay
Fear and loathing across Leeds on Monday night as Everton
and Nottingham Forest found their voices and reframed the Premier League table.
But at the same time, down at Elland Road, proof that not everything concerning
Leeds United was fatally stuck in reverse gear.
Three thousand looked on as the club’s under-21s edged
through a play-off semi-final with Aston Villa, concocting a fine winning goal
and moving to within one result of redeeming their relegation last season.
There was joy in the football and joy in the scoreline, a sensation which
Leeds’ senior squad have generated in small quantities over the past year.
Forest stand between the under-21s and a return to Premier League 2’s top
division. They look like a team in good working order.
They are also slightly under the radar, operating quietly in
the background, because strife at Elland Road has concentrated attention on the
first team. The academy knows its place and it was no different last season
when a chronic senior injury list and the regular need for the Under-21s to
step up and plug gaps made collateral damage of the development team,
eventually seeing them relegated. Their subsequent pursuit of the second
division title and now promotion has also been obscured by bigger things. More
eyes were on Everton and Forest’s Premier League victories on Monday, results
which held Leeds’ feet closer to the fire. And yet, the progress in their
academy might be of more importance than it has been for a while.
📺 #LUFCU21 𝟮-𝟭 𝗔𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗻 𝗩𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗮 𝗨𝟮𝟭
— Leeds United (@LUFC) May 9, 2023
⚽️ Joseph (29'), Perkins (43') pic.twitter.com/NZgwoQYDnp
Last month Leeds published their latest accounts, covering
the 2021-22 financial year, and a throwaway line in it hinted at a possible
plan of attack if, as is very possible now, the club lose their first-team
Premier League status. The strategic report, written by chief executive Angus
Kinnear, remarked that the “development of a squad with depth and youth means
(the club) has the capability to sustain temporary loss of Premier League
status without altering its long-term trajectory”. There was, in other words, a
safety net ready to be deployed in the event that the club went down.
Needless to say, that statement cannot pass without some
scrutiny. However this season ends, Leeds look less like a club with a
long-term trajectory than they do a club in need of a thorough reset. And a
squad with depth and youth is a generous way of describing a dressing room
which has Leeds 19th in their division, worryingly close to the last-chance
saloon. It would also be disingenuous to say that the point of money thrown at
the academy was really to mitigate against the impact of relegation. But it is
true that through six years with Andrea Radrizzani as chairman and, until last
week, Victor Orta as director of football, Leeds have been as active in the
field of youth recruitment as they have in the main transfer market. Even with
Orta in his final hours at Elland Road, there was still talk of him doing a
deal for Ilias Akhomach, an 18-year-old winger at Barcelona, another one for
the future whatever the future actually is. In many respects, that area of
scouting was where the Orta often seemed most comfortable.
Analysis of English football academies often ranks Leeds’ as one of the most productive when it comes to the numbers of players who actually graduate and the first-team impact they exert but the irony is that for all the attention paid to it, the club are not actually gambling match days on it. As a whole, the involvement of academy names in their first-team campaign, those who would still class as genuine under-21s, is extremely limited. Darko Gyabi has started once in the Premier League. Mateo Joseph has played three times as a substitute. Sonny Perkins got a go in both cups but has spent most of his time trying to stretch himself at development level. Charlie Cresswell went on loan at Millwall until he fractured an eye socket. Joe Gelhardt and Cody Drameh are heading into the Championship play-offs with Sunderland and Luton.
It is fair to assume Archie Gray would have played a touch
more had injury not held him back over Christmas and there is, of course, Willy
Gnonto but as Gnonto’s star rose, he reminded everyone that he was an Italy
international and not really the definition of a youth-team player. This
season, predominantly, has depended on the old skeleton of Marcelo Bielsa’s
side and the more established bodies Leeds amassed in the aftermath of their
narrow avoidance of relegation last season. On Saturday, Sam Allardyce’s first
line-up as head coach away at Manchester City had an average age of 27. Several
of his selections were an immediate beeline towards men who had been around the
block: Joel Robles, Adam Forshaw, Patrick Bamford. But should Leeds go down,
the money and faith they have devoted to academy recruitment will have to pay
off to a greater extent. It figures that in scrambling to pull together a team
good enough for promotion, the best of their Under-21s would come into play.
Which becomes a test of how bright and intelligent their academy investment has
actually been.
That some of the players at the level are ready to be tested
is beyond dispute. Drameh has been so good at Luton that he looks like he is
selling himself short in the Championship. Cresswell was turning in a very
competent year with Millwall before a blow to his head required surgery. It is
arguably a mark of how far Leeds got ahead of themselves that they were open to
permanent offers for him in January. Gelhardt’s form has been mixed at
Sunderland but they finished in the top six and he was not helped there by the
injury to Ross Stewart which changed the original plan for him. Gyabi has
cruised in the under-21s all year. Perkins has scored 12 goals in 19
appearances and Joseph 16 in 20. Those are numbers and standards of performance
which say development squad football has relatively little left to offer.
For a long time, Leeds liked to promote the academy as a
layer of growth beneath other things that were good at Elland Road. Now, with
development-league promotion within their grasp, it looks like the one part of
their football operations which is functioning effectively, or the only part
which is going to plan. And if it comes to it, the academy alone will not solve
the predicament of turning relegation into promotion overnight, as Burnley have
done. Between parachute fees and transfer fees amassed through outgoing
transfers, Leeds would have to show the wit required to assemble more besides.
But one more win takes the under-21s back to the forefront of academy football
in England and for some of them, the spotlight next season might be more
intense than that.
