Time has not been Jesse Marsch’s friend since he took charge of Leeds United with 12 matches to save the club’s season across 11 weeks. The priority has of course been drilling his ideas into the first-team unit at Thorp Arch with the help of his backroom staff Cameron Toshack, Franz Schiemer and Mark Jackson.
Marsch’s wider vision incorporates all levels of the football club working to the same tactical philosophy, but those changes are not instilled overnight. The American and his backroom team watched on from the back of the John Charles Stand on Monday evening as the under-23s hammered Crystal Palace 4-0.
Andrew Taylor, who was pulling the strings from the dugout, said the new regime was already having an impact upon the under-23s, despite the first-team pressures taking precedence at Leeds right now. He said: “It’s credit to him, to Frankie, to Cameron, and obviously Jacko’s got that affiliation anyway with the 23s, the amount of time and effort and care they put in, not only to their lads, but to our lads as well, the 23s, the 18s, they genuinely want us, everybody, to progress, everybody to get better.
GO HERE: Rate Jesse Marsch's opening month in charge of Leeds United
Taylor has only been leading the under-23s as long as Marsch has been with the first team, when he called Jackson into the senior unit and away from the reserves. The former Middlesbrough full-back is assisted by Michal Pujdak and Alessandro Barcherini, but it was Schiemer, Toshack and Jackson who showed the under-23s how important they are to the club as they prepared for Monday night’s game.
“They’ll sit and have meetings with us as staff,” he said. “Cameron and Frankie and Jacko did an hour-and-a-half meeting with the 23s going through the philosophies.
“They’d clipped the clip themselves, some games, so that, to me, that’s invaluable to our lads, that they don’t just listen to me and Puj and Al, but they’ve got first-team staff actually stood there going ‘well look, we’ve been watching these videos, this is what we’ve seen, this is good, this is what you should be doing.’
“It’s their game model and they know it better than we do and they’re giving them the time and the effort to implement it over to our lads. It’s top class.”
