Life in Leeds U21s is as precarious as it always will be — Square Ball 9/2/24
CAN'T WIN
Written by: Rob Conlon
Professional sport tries to kid itself that enough coin and
data will eradicate the random nature of, in football’s case, 22 people kicking
a ball around a pitch. Youth development is a prime example. Clubs across the
country invest millions of pounds hiring the best coaches, developing the best
facilities, and poaching the best talent, trying to unearth the latest gem who
will either save them a few quid in the transfer market or earn them millions
more. Meanwhile, authorities tinker with competition formats and quotas
convincing themselves a sixteen-team play-off competition for reserves is just
the trick to create the next golden generation. Unfortunately, the fact of the
matter is money can’t buy Eddie Gray’s genes.
Youth development has become, as Daniel Farke likes to say,
a ‘topic’ at Leeds United in recent weeks. The Under-21s have begun a new cycle
under Scott Gardner, their sixth head coach in the last four years, while the
majority of prospects signed by Victor Orta have either been sold or loaned out
never to be seen in a Leeds shirt again, leaving a core of Under-18s to step up
and concede thirteen goals in their last three games.
When Gardner’s side lost 3-1 to Sunderland last week, I
couldn’t help but return to a couple of questions I often ask myself when
watching the U21s: who is this for, and who does it benefit? While U18s
midfielder Dan Toulson was making his first PL2 start for Leeds surrounded by
similarly ‘inexperienced’ players at that level alongside mainstays of the side
who have reached a dead end, Sunderland were racing into a 3-0 first-half lead
thanks to two goals from 25-year-old Ukrainian striker Nazariy Rusyn, who has
made over 100 senior appearances and has played and scored in the Europa League
for Dynamo Kiev. Rusyn was signed by Sunderland in the summer as their most
senior centre-forward, and the goals evidently rekindled his scoring touch as
he came off the bench to net their equaliser against Middlesbrough at the
weekend, only his second of the season. I’m sure Gardner and Toulson are
delighted for him.
The shoe has often been on the other foot, as Southampton’s
B team found out at Elland Road last season, when they lost 6-2 to a Leeds
‘U21’ side that wasn’t far off a line-up Farke could have fielded in the
Championship this term: Pat Bamford scored a hat-trick, supplied by an
attacking midfield trio of Wilf Gnonto, Cree Summerville, and Sonny Perkins,
playing ahead of Archie Gray and Darko Gyabi, and backed by a defence of Junior
Firpo, Liam Cooper, Leo Hjelde, and Bill Ayling. Maybe one day Southampton’s
goalscorer Sam Bellis will look back at that night at Elland Road as a career
highlight — signed by Southampton from Man City, he’s now on loan at
Kidderminster from Barrow.
The obvious alternative is for a club to send their best
young players out on loan so they can experience ‘proper’ football, but nobody
really knows if that’s the best idea or not. Marcelo Bielsa argued it was
better for Leeds’ most talented academy players to be coached at Thorp Arch and
make up the numbers in murderball; Cody Drameh (and, briefly, Cree Summerville)
disagreed. When The Athletic first launched their football coverage, I remember
reading an article in which an unnamed agent suggested there was nothing worse
for a player’s career than an unproductive loan move. In the very next
sentence, a different source said some people don’t know what they’re talking
about. (I can no longer find the article, but you will have to trust me that if
I was going to make something up I’d at least make it far more interesting.)
Stuck in Leeds’ U21s after spending the first half of the
season on loan at Oxford, where the only impression he made was a half-arsed
performance in the EFL Trophy that meant none of their fans were arguing when
he couldn’t make the bench in League One, Sonny Perkins probably now
understands what the first agent was saying. Leo Hjelde might be thinking that
you can’t win either way.
The only time I noticed Perkins in the U21s defeat to
Sunderland was when he twice turned down opportunities to shoot when given a
clear sight at goal. On both occasions he tried to spin on the ball and was
knocked over. After the second, Sunderland countered and Rusyn made it 2-0.
Leeds have only published highlights of the U21s’ fixture against Chelsea in
the Premier League Cup on Monday, but Perkins is again absent in making much of
a contribution. Instead, they begin with Leeds’ teens looking similarly overwhelmed,
conceding the opener after ‘keeper Darryl Ombang passes the ball straight to a
Chelsea attacker and Toulson — the latest player to fill in at left-back
because we’re not allowed any — losing possession in his own penalty area,
followed by Harvey Sutcliffe giving a throw-in straight to Chelsea’s striker to
score their second.
But there were the first signs for optimism under Gardner,
Leeds playing some lovely touch-and-thwack for Charlie Allen’s opener, Marley
Wilson carrying his goalscoring streak from the U18s up an age group by
thumping in the second, and Luca Thomas poaching a late equaliser for his
second in two games. In midfield, seventeen-year-old Charlie Crew is already a
Wales U21 international and has turned down approaches to switch allegiance to
England, enjoying the guidance of former Leeds midfielder Matt Jones, who has
coached him through the Wales youth system.
Earlier this week Phil Hay wrote an article for The Athletic
questioning Leeds’ ‘emerging talent’ transfer strategy and pointing out that,
for all the investment and focus Leeds have put on their academy recruitment,
for every Pascal Struijk or Cree Summerville, there’s an Ian Poveda or Cody
Drameh. Part of this boils down to pure logistics; Victor Orta’s first wave of
academy signings — Madger Gomes, Oriol Rey, Hugo Diaz et al — were required
because the youth teams had been left to rot under Massimo Cellino to such an
extent that Leeds needed to sign a hoard of teenagers just to field a team to
fulfil their fixtures.
But mainly, yes, for every Struijk or Summerville there will
be countless others who don’t make it because it has always been this way, no
matter whether they’re plucked from Huesca or Holbeck. At my old job working
for the website Planet Football, we published dozens of interviews with former
academy players who were highly rated but ultimately fell down the divisions or
out of the game altogether. A theme developed that they usually blamed one of
three factors — an unfortunately timed injury, a manager who took a liking to
them losing their job, a loan spell that didn’t go as envisaged, or a
combination of any of the three.
Such sliding doors moments can be frighteningly precarious.
For every Paul Robinson or Jonny Woodgate, who won the 1997 Youth Cup with
Leeds, there was a Wesley Boyle, who made his debut at 17 then was ruled out
for two years with injury due to two operations and some botched advice from a
physio who was later sacked; or Paul Shepherd, who broke Gary Speed’s
goalscoring records from midfield in the youth team and was liked by Howard
Wilkinson and Paul Hart but was never spoken to by George Graham, even when he
was given his one and only appearance up against Patrick Vieira at Arsenal. “It
just made me become a bit bitter,” he said. “As a young guy, I was just
finishing training and couldn’t wait to get away from there… you go to training
with two or three people and are just being made to run, it’s demoralising.
These people were playing with my life and were seemingly out to ruin it.” Last
year, Shepherd was sentenced to nine years in jail after being found guilty of
producing and conspiring to supply drugs and money laundering.
As Sean McGurk brought his three years at Elland Road to an
end and packed his bags for Swindon and League Two football, I wonder what he
would point to as his sliding doors moment at Leeds. Despite being the U21s
best player for the last two years, he’s never appeared close to a first-team
breakthrough under various managers, nor has he had a bad injury to blame.
We’ll never know whether a loan would have gone right or wrong, because
interest never materialised into a temporary move in 2022. In an ideal world,
Archie Gray would be proof that cream always rises to the top. But as McGurk
would have learned watching Weston McKennie and Rasmus Kristensen relegate
Leeds last season, sometimes shit floats.