After a barnstorming return to the Premier League, the start of the 2021/22 season has been hard going for Leeds. Consistent injuries have decimated their squad, including time out for key players such as Patrick Bamford and Kalvin Phillips.
It has left the club languishing in 16th place, eight points ahead of the relegation spots as they look to secure a third successive season of top-flight football.
Despite the situation at times seeming untenable, injuries have allowed Marcelo Bielsa to promote younger players into his squad. The likes of Sam Greenwood, Crysencio Summerville and Charlie Cresswell have all made their debuts this season.
But it is two of his younger talents in Tyler Roberts and Joe Gelhardt who have given Bielsa, as well as Leeds fans, hope for the future in both the short and long term.
Speaking to Sky Sports ahead of the Super Sunday trip to West Ham, Bielsa said: “There are two messages that I’ve received – why don’t we buy players to solve those absences and why is the squad so small?
“There’s no way to make a squad bigger if the five centre-forwards are injured at the same time. The same if there are four players injured of the six players who resolved their problem in one position. So there’s not an error in the planning, you can’t plan for something so unusual.
“They ask ‘why don’t we buy a centre-back or a centre-forward?’, and there’s the engineering economically of how to compete in this league. We brought in Gelhardt, Roberts, Greenwood – then at a low level of investment – but we also bought Rodrigo and Bamford so you’ve mortgaged a future if you buy good players at their place.
“I Imagine if we had more players than we do, one little space there would be for the development of the youngsters. You also have to interpret the feelings of those in the public.
“When Roberts was injured and Gelhardt came on, Tyler had played the first half as one of the best he had played at Leeds at a level and intensity that was very high. He was in conditions to finish the game two or three times and he didn’t get it, like so many players like Bamford, who went through with missing goals until he scored 17 in 20 games in the Premier League.
“So Tyler played that first half and it filled me with hope, but when he came off and Gelhardt came on, the stadium exploded. The influence of the fans multiplied due to him coming on. Gelhardt filled the fans with hope.
“Also in this moment when it’s difficult to not deserve criticism, it’s natural to be criticised and we deserve to be criticised, I take the advantage to talk about things that influence our decisions.
“I describe it by saying those things could have been avoided. But there are sometimes things that are linked to luck.”
Bielsa wanted Drameh stay | ‘Young players want to leave Leeds’
One young player who has already made a loan move in the January transfer window is Cody Drameh, who joined Sky Bet Championship side Cardiff for the remainder of the season.
But given the injuries in Bielsa’s squad, the manager admitted he would have liked the 20-year-old to have stayed at Leeds and revealed Drameh is not the only youngster looking for a move elsewhere.
He told his pre-match press conference: “I didn’t think he [Drameh] needed to play games elsewhere. He was a player that is necessary with all the absences we’ve had, but he preferred to go and play outside of Leeds. In a situation where there are opportunities for the youngsters, which has increased clearly and, in this case, Drameh would prefer to experiment outside our team.
