Upheaval from the top of Leeds United was always going to send shockwaves through the rest of the club. The under-21s saw their figurehead ripped away and yet they are now, still, 90 minutes away from promotion.
Jesse Marsch’s February sacking saw under-21 boss Michael Skubala pulled away from the day job and stuck in front of the world’s media as United navigated their most important week of the season. While Skubala was taking on Manchester United, Michal Pujdak kept the under-21 machine marching on.
Skubala would stay with the first team under Javi Gracia, but Paco Gallardo would drop back down to lead the youth side with Pujdak. It cannot have been an easy period for a young group facing so much change in so little time, but it was not chaos Leeds wanted to insulate them from.
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Adam Underwood, United’s head of academy, can only praise the youngsters for the way they have ridden those challenges with the aid of the staff guiding them.
“It's probably important to acknowledge just how well Michal himself and also Paco and the rest of the staff have managed that change,” he said. “That's a huge challenge and one of the realities of football and certainly football at the highest level.
“The way they've handled that challenge has transmitted to the players. As a knock-on, they've done incredibly well.
“We educate them in the realities of football because we'd be doing them a disservice if we didn't. When changes happen we have to be open about that and we have to embrace that.
“Occasionally, that will mean things on a big level will change, for example, tweaks to the playing style, or the requirements for individual positions and we can't insulate ourselves from that because these players are so close to the first team. It would be the wrong thing for them.
“Also, sometimes there's changes in the training ground culture and environment, and we have to adapt and flex to make sure they're ready for that too. So having that consistency that runs through is always challenging with players at under-21 because the environment just doesn't look like that.
“So what we have to make sure is we've got really top staff and that's not just the guys who're working with them on the pitch, but all the support they receive off the pitch is in tune and ready to support them for whatever is in front of them in the short term.
“The other eye is then on the long term and making sure they're going in the right direction. So we're really pleased with that and we're at a stage of maturity now with the academy whereby I'd be confident in saying that's natural for us and that's normal and we can cope with that well.”
The final hurdle this young group has to clear stands before them on Monday night at Elland Road. After missing out on automatic promotion into Premier League 2 Division One by two goals, Leeds have had to go through the play-offs.
On Monday, they beat fifth-place Aston Villa 2-1 to set up a final with third-place Nottingham Forest. The Whites hammered their opponents 5-1 at home last August, but then lost 1-0 in the return fixture this January.
At the time of writing, ticket sales for the under-21 fixture had gone beyond 10,000. Underwood and the staff want to see as many as possible through the LS11 turnstiles for the 7pm kick-off.
“It's a reflection on the interest our fanbase has in our academy and our young players,” he said. “We know that's been central to our strategy here and their achievement of just missing out on automatic promotion has given us the opportunity to put them in a pressure situation.
“The billing of the game and the magnitude of the game for these young players is clear. The more we get into Elland Road, the better the experience for them from a development perspective.
“I'm really pleased to hear we're up to 10,000 and hopefully we'll surpass that.”
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