The Premier League fixtures are released on Thursday and Leeds United fans will patiently waiting to learn their side’s fate. It’s always an exciting time of the year as the new season moves into view on the distant horizon and supporters begin to plot where the points will be coming from throughout the year.
Signings have already been made with the Whites moving swiftly to bring in Brenden Aaronson and Rasmus Kristensen and more new faces are expected to join them at Elland Road in the coming weeks as Jesse Marsch gets started on shaping his squad in his image. The American head coach had 12 games in charge last season and by picking up four wins and three draws, he achieved the goal of keeping the club up.
But, as he prepares for his first pre-season campaign in Yorkshire, he will be looking to make his mark in training, too. It will be the first time he takes charge of a training session without the pressure of a relegation battle hanging over the club and he’ll be keen to make rapid progress at Thorp Arch.
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As such, on Thursday morning he’ll be looking at his side’s early fixtures knowing a decent start to the season will only serve to reinforce his pre-season methods and messages and draw a line under the club’s 2021-22 struggles. While there are no easy games in the Premier League, certainly not for a team that survived on the final day of the season last month, he will be hoping for a kind start, one that gives them the best chance possible of getting early points on the board.
That could mean avoiding a so-called top six side over the first two or three weekends in favour of playing teams expected to be in the bottom half of the table. Nothing is a given but a couple of early wins would certainly boost confidence in camp and around Elland Road as Marsch takes the club into a new era.
A run of negative results and defeats may prove damaging moving forward into the rest of the season, just as Leeds’ winless start last year did. The 5-1 thumping at Old Trafford on the opening day of last season set the tone for the Whites last season and it’s fair to say heads dropped as Marcelo Bielsa’s side had to wait until October to bag their first league win.
Marsch will be desperate to avoid history repeating itself this time around and a relatively favourable start to the campaign would give his side a better chance of having a platform to build on as the rest of the campaign progresses.
