Joe Rothwell is putting the Relevant in Mr Irrelevant — Square Ball 10/12/24

No Jaidon Anthony

Written by: Chris McMenamy

The NFL has a name for the player picked last in its annual draft: Mr Irrelevant. While Joe Rothwell was the first signing not named Joe Rodon through the door at Leeds this summer, he could be forgiven for feeling like an afterthought when he arrived. A loanee midfielder? Ah right, yeah. Nice one, thanks. Who’s replacing Archie Gray? What about a striker? What about Cree Summerville? Georgi Rutter? A number 10? What do you mean by “Brenden Aaronson”?

Rothwell suffered from what I’m going to call the Jaidon Anthony Effect. A loanee from Bournemouth who isn’t expected to play all that much. Five months on, we’re purring after watching him stroll about Elland Road like the midfield general of our dreams in Leeds’ 2-0 win against Derby. Slick passing and an assist from a corner, plus a little blood and thunder in the early exchanges in the form of a David Batty-esque tackle on Derby’s Kane Wilson, which was (wrongly) given as a foul but had its desired effect on the rest of the team.

Injecting life into the Elland Road crowd has often eluded Leeds’ players this season, even though we’re usually easily pleased. Just leather someone and, most of the time, we’ll rise in raucous applause like the spectators who watched the bloodbath of entertainment in the Colosseum. It’s hard to be fervorous when the opponent isn’t fighting back, but Rothwell ploughed on regardless, showing no mercy.

He did his bit to take the game by the scruff of the neck, rather than allow it to become another tepid, cagey affair. Carrying the ball forward feels like an underrated trait in modern football, an age where the game can often look like that scene from The Simpsons where the two teams knock the ball about on halfway before a riot breaks out. Rothwell likes to do it a lot. Our pal Jonny Cooper’s stat on Rothwell’s ball carrying highlights just how instrumental he has been in getting Leeds going:

Rothwell looks up and teams panic. The art of defending is slowly dying and he knows. If you run at an opponent, they’ll almost always trail a leg. At least at this level. Perhaps he’s just an aggressive guy. His driving run that set up Leeds’ opening goal against QPR a few weeks back and his clattering tackles from this weekend past are different sides of the same coin.

The impetus provided by him made a real difference on Saturday against a defence that needed coaxing into engagement. It also woke Leeds up in a sleepy first half that only kicked into gear when Rothwell set up Joe Rodon from a corner to make it 1-0. Is it merely coincidental that Leeds’ set-piece fortunes has improved since he became the taker? Two direct assists, against Sheffield United and Derby, plus a corner goal against Luton from his delivery, and if we’re to believe statman Cooper, we must also attribute Dan James’ goal against Plymouth as coming from a set-piece.

Has Joe Rothwell made us, dare I say, dangerous from set-pieces?! Is he a magician? A descendant of Matt Heath? Did anyone see this coming? I certainly didn’t, not least because it took time for Rothwell to get his chance. Some thought it might never come, but not him: “Sometimes, people see you leaving a club to go on loan and think that you come in just to make up the numbers. Obviously, in my mind, that was never the case.”

He had a similar start to Jaidon Anthony at Leeds, picking up minutes here and there in the first eight weeks. His only start came in that grim 3-0 League Cup loss to Middlesbrough. Were it not for injuries to Ethan Ampadu and Ilia Gruev, we might still consider Rothwell a bit-part player or a stop-gap on the way to promotion. There’s no way he wouldn’t have got a chance at some point, whether through injury or rotation, but this happy accident might end up playing a key role in Leeds’ promotion push.

Even when he got his chance, he remained somewhat in the shadows as Ao Tanaka took the plaudits and the chants. Eleven Championship starts later, one might argue both players’ tangible impact on matches has been closer than the media reaction might suggest, even if it would be untrue to say that Tanaka hasn’t been the better of the two.

Seeing Ampadu back on the bench while the Tanaka-Rothwell axis operates with equal amounts of aesthetic and utility is calming. It might be nice if Leeds dipped their toes in the January transfer market to sign another creative option (plus some defensive cover) but it’s not a necessity.

Daniel Farke sees Rothwell as a creative solution to the ‘missing’ number 10 that many crave. “I’m happy with my squad right now,” Farke said in a recent presser. “[Ethan Ampadu’s] return would perhaps free up one of our other midfield players to use them in a higher role.” The idea of an Ampadu, Rothwell, Tanaka midfield three has me salivating and reminiscing of those wonderful six weeks when Marcelo Bielsa had Adam Forshaw fit and playing alongside Mat Klich and Kalvin Phillips. We were so dominant in those games, limiting opponents to one or two touches inside our area each game.

It might actually be the final piece of the puzzle for Farke, allowing his side total control of games while maintaining an attacking threat with their array of wide attackers. We shall see.

If Rothwell can put in performances like Saturday’s on a regular basis, he will get his flowers from the Elland Road faithful and have us begging the club to sign him on a permanent basis this summer. He has settled pretty quickly at Leeds, certainly for a Manc, and might just prove to be an unlikely hero.