Progress with Junior Firpo’s injury is accelerating and his rapid recovery is narrowing the window Leeds United must make do without him. The stop-gap, the man who has to make all of this work in the meantime is Pascal Struijk.
The Whites had no interest in pursuing a left-back this summer before the Spaniard broke down with injury ahead of the trip to Australia. By that logic, Firpo’s return to fitness should end any United interest in a new face once again.
The closer Firpo gets, the better each scan looks, the more cautiously Jesse Marsch, Victor Orta and Andrea Radrizzani are bound to consider taking the plunge on another full-back. Many will disagree with the policy of going into a 38-game campaign with one senior, natural left-back, who struggled with form and fitness in his one previous campaign here.
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Whether you agree with that point of view or not, this looks like the route Leeds could be taking and it will be held up as one of the big risks they take into 2022/23. A new left-back is not off the table, but Firpo’s recovery speed has been trumpeted alongside a cautious tone urging prudence with the remaining transfer business.
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If you assume Firpo does not miss another match after his return from this injury and goes on to hit performance levels few could have anticipated, the one problem remains the current pocket of time. Struijk is the man this initial risk is resting on in an area of the field where Marsch’s tactics demand control down the full length of the pitch.
And if we revert to the real world where Firpo could well miss at least the odd game here and there, Struijk again becomes the nominated stand-in. Marsch has to be comfortable with that scenario and he was asked about it yesterday.
“It's not his natural position, but Pascal still is mobile enough,” he said. “He's intelligent, he's technically good and he understands the tactics.”
The centre-back played as a full-back under Marcelo Bielsa to good effect in short bursts and nobody should hang him out to dry as a lost cause in that role. Marsch sees advantages to the Dutchman in that slot, not just a makeshift option treading water.
“It gives us even more flexibility if we want to build with three, if we want to build with four,” he said. “In the last matches, that flexibility and his positioning has been quite good.
“We've worked a lot with him, showing them a lot of videos and talking a lot of different phases of the game and what we want it to look like. He helps us on set-pieces by being a little bit bigger and he helps us defend a little bit harder in and around the box.
“There's benefits actually to having Pascal on the pitch in this position. He's taken it on that way and he's ready for a big season and to show he can play in that position quite well.”
There are four weeks of the transfer window remaining and five competitive games. As always, time will tell whether Leeds go back to the market or take the risk with 35,000 'I told you sos' next May.
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