Tag: Leeds United

Armas not on Gracia’s Leeds staff, still reportedly at Leeds

It’s been a strange few weeks for Armas

It’s already over for Chris Armas at Leeds…sort of.

Leeds manager Javi Gracia said that the former U.S. men’s national team midfielder, who hasn’t been seen on the bench since the Spaniard took over, is not on his first-team coaching staff.

“He’s not part of my staff. He’s not here,” Gracia told reporters ahead of his side’s Saturday home match against Brighton. “It’s something the club can maybe explain better.”

When Jesse Marsch was sacked on February 6, Leeds said his assistant Rene Maric would also be leaving the club, but Armas stayed on alongside Michael Skubala and Paco Gallardo.

However, when Gracia named his assistants, Armas’ status was not addressed. Skubala was kept on, while Gracia added assistants Mikel Antia, Zigor Aranalde, and Juan Jose Solla. Gallardo is now the club’s Under-21 head coach.

The Athletic is reporting that Armas is still employed by Leeds, but what he’s actually doing at this point remains unclear.

Armas’ very short time with Leeds

Armas couldn’t have picked a worse time to sign on with Leeds. He was officially announced as a new assistant for Jesse Marsch on January 25. That was on a Wednesday, and on the weekend Leeds defeated Accrington Stanley in the FA Cup.

Leeds then lost 1-0 at Nottingham Forest on February 5, and Marsch was dismissed the next day. Armas worked as part of Marsch’s staff for a total of 12 days before things fell into disarray.

Gracia’s clarification on Friday came just 44 days after the club announced that Armas was joining the staff. Since then, he’s been an assistant, one of three members of an interim co-coaching committee set-up, and his current status on the books but not actually given any duties.

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Leeds’ interminable winless run is over after 1-0 victory over Southampton

The Javi Gracia era at Elland Road started with a vital win

It’s been 113 days, but Leeds has won a Premier League game.

With Tyler Adams, Weston McKennie, and Brenden Aaronson all starting, Leeds — in new manager Javi Gracia’s first game in charge — notched a potentially vital 1-0 victory over Southampton on Saturday.

That ends a 10-game winless run in which Leeds had seen their offense absolutely dry up. Leeds fell 4-3 at Tottenham going into the World Cup break, but since then it’s been a real slog. Leeds has been shut out five times since the league resumed, and has scored just six total goals in nine league matches.

But for today at least, all is well as Junior Firpo’s 77th minute strike was decisive in a crunch relegation battle.

When Saturday’s matches kicked off, these were the two bottom teams in the Premier League, but Leeds’ win has lifted them — barring a Bournemouth win over Manchester City later on Saturday — out of the drop zone and into the fragile safety of 17th place.

On the day, Leeds had the better of Southampton, controlling most of the possession, dictating the terms and tempo, and carving out 14 shots to Southampton’s eight. However, Leeds has repeatedly found a way to let that kind of game slip away from them, and in fact that pattern more than any other is what cost Jesse Marsch his job.

So for Leeds fans, watching their side avoid an all-too-common defensive calamity and pairing that with an all-too-rare goal has to be a relief.

On the other hand, there is also an element of good luck to the winner, and given the way the season has gone, it might be karma balancing out for Leeds. An attacking move out on the left wing should have seen Crysencio Summerville — boxed into the corner by three Southampton defenders — lose possession.

Instead, the Dutch attacker’s hopeful pass — or possibly just an attempt to carve out a corner? — clipped a defender before bobbling along the endline to Jack Harrison, who used his first touch to fool Southampton with a backheel to Firpo.

Firpo, under a challenge from Ibrahima Diallo on his left and with James Ward-Prowse closing on his right, shot while falling, and as is often the case in that scenario, he didn’t hit it well.

However, the ball hopped and skipped along the Elland Road grass, while Jan Bednarek seemed to freeze in the expectation of being hit by a more powerful strike. Firpo’s effort shuffled along past him, and had just enough on it to sneak past Gavin Bazunu, who didn’t see where the ball actually was until it was already rolling by him.

Watch Firpo’s goal end Leeds winless run

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Jesse Marsch remains unemployed, won’t take over at Southampton

Marsch was set to take over just a week after he was sacked by Leeds

The Jesse Marsch era at Southampton is over before it even started.

The American manager was nearing a deal to take over the struggling Saints but talks have broken down, according to multiple reports on Wednesday.

At issue was the length of Marsch’s proposed contract: Southampton wanted to bring him in on a six-month deal with the option to extend, while the manager was looking to sign onto a more long-term contract.

Marsch traveled to Southampton on Tuesday to complete the deal, but the club’s managerial search will now continue.

Marsch was nearing the Saints job just over a week after he was sacked by Leeds amid a winless run that saw the club near the Premier League relegation zone.

The 49-year-old was seen as an ideal candidate to take over for Nathan Jones, who was sacked following the club’s 2-1 home loss to a 10-man Wolves.

Jones had won just once in eight Premier League games during his tenure, which lasted just barely more than four months. Jones himself had been appointed in November after Ralph Hasenhüttl’s four-year run at St. Mary’s came to an end with Southampton taking just 12 points from the club’s first 14 Premier League matches.

That situation never improved under Jones, and the Saints sit at the very bottom of the table, four points from safety.

Marsch’s high-octane style closely mirrors Hasenhüttl’s, with Southampton believing the American would have given them a chance for survival as he would have instilled a style that the club’s players were already familiar with.

But now it appears Southampton assistant Rubén Sellés will have a shot at leading the club on a caretaker basis, as the Saints face a daunting away trip to Chelsea on Saturday.

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Jesse Marsch saved his job by doing the near-impossible: winning at Anfield

Leeds desperately needed a win, but this wasn’t the game they expected to get it

Jesse Marsch needed a victory to save his Leeds job, but this probably wasn’t the game he had circled on his calendar.

Leeds stunned Liverpool 2-1 at Anfield on Saturday, the club’s first league win since August 21 and a result that got them out of the relegation zone.

There were better chances to get three points for Marsch in an eight-game winless league run: last week against Fulham and the previous week at Leicester come to mind as recent examples.

But both of those games ended in defeat, with Leeds fans calling for Marsch’s head and chanting for his predecessor Marcelo Bielsa. It was getting ugly.

Liverpool, for all intents and purposes, doesn’t lose at home. Its last home defeat prior to Saturday was in March 2021. Before that, the club had a 68-game unbeaten home run snapped in January 2021.

But Crysencio Summerville scored a dramatic winner in the 89th minute in front of the away fans, giving Marsch a stay of execution. He was pretty happy.

It’s hard to blame him. Leeds was on a rotten run of results but has actually been playing fairly respectfully. The club actually had a +1.4 expected goals difference heading into the game at Anfield, suggesting it would soon start getting the rub of the green.

On Saturday that luck finally arrived, though it did take an absolutely massive performance from goalkeeper Illan Meslier and a fluky early goal from Rodrigo Moreno, who was given an empty-net tap-in thanks to a mix-up between Joe Gomez and Alisson.

“I’ve believed in this group,” Marsch told Sky Sports after the game. “We shouldn’t be in this situation if you look at the metrics, but we are. Now we’ve got something like this and now we have to stay strong.”

Whatever criticism you could level at Marsch, it’s clear that his players are still playing for him. With that and a little more luck, he could just keep his job for the long term.

Watch Summerville’s winner at Liverpool

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Leeds winless run hits seven as Jesse Marsch’s side falls flat at Leicester

Leeds are now only above the relegation zone on goal difference

It might be time to start worrying about Leeds United.

Leeds fell to a 2-0 defeat at Leicester on Thursday, extending their winless run to seven games. In that spell they’ve been shut out four times, and supporters appear to be getting pretty agitated.

That poor form has completely unraveled what was a good start to the 2022-23 season. Leeds took seven points from their first three games, including a 3-0 win over Chelsea. Since then, though, they’ve picked up just two points, and are only above the relegation places on goal difference.

Not all defeats are the same, and Leeds will maintain that they were unlucky to lose to Leicester, who even with the win remain two spots further down the table than Jesse Marsch’s club. It took a Robin Koch own goal to put Leicester on the board early, and the one and only shot on goal from the Foxes saw Harvey Barnes finish off a flowing move to make it 2-0.

That is a fair argument for Leeds to make, but they offered little going forward as Leicester defended their box with a distinct sense of comfort. Sure, Leeds gave up very little in the game, but even while trailing for most of the match, they managed to test Leicester goalkeeper Danny Ward with a whopping two shots.

With all that in mind, it wasn’t a shock to find out that traveling Leeds fans were unhappy with what they saw at the King Power Stadium.

Pressure building on Marsch

Marsch is under pressure for a few different reasons. The raw results don’t help, and there’s always the issue of following a beloved coach like Marcelo Bielsa (who some fans brought up as this game wore down). Coaches from the U.S. are also received skeptically in the UK — just ask Bob Bradley — as a matter of course. Marsch’s past successes in MLS and Austria deserve respect, but in a “sure he’s won in Europe, but can he get it done on a rainy night in Brentford?” kind of environment, his seat will likely heat up faster than another coach’s would.

There’s also the fact that Leeds — after selling Kalvin Phillips and Raphinha, it must be said — spent more than Liverpool on additions this summer, with five different players coming in on nine-figure transfer fees. That spending was designed to avoid needing another dramatic escape on the final day of the season, and at the moment that unwanted outcome appears to be distinctly possible.

On the plus side, at least for U.S. men’s national team fans, the heat Marsch is starting to feel hasn’t yet extended to Brenden Aaronson and Tyler Adams. Both have started every one of Leeds’ games in the Premier League, and Aaronson in particularly seems to have become an instant hit.

However, any time a team goes this long between wins, changes might arrive. Marsch has long stuck to his high-pressing principles, but we may soon see a change in roles, formation, or specific tactics that could impact the USMNT duo in some way.

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Leeds United’s Patrick Bamford calls out creation of Super League with poignant point about racism

Patrick Bamford did not hold back about the state of European soccer.

The formation of the Super League in European soccer has lit a fire under sports fans and players alike. The creation of the new league, which would break 12 of soccer’s biggest European clubs away from the European Club Association into one tournament — effectively replacing the UEFA Champions League — has been a hot button issue since the news dropped over the weekend.

From commentators to fans, the soccer world has not held back on tearing into the Super League and what it would do to the European soccer scene.

Players too have been vocal about the new league, and Leeds United’s own Patrick Bamford is the latest to speak out on Monday. Bamford, however, didn’t hold back in his comments, pointing out the double standard of the higher ups in the soccer world on an issue like this compared to racism.

 

Racism is a major problem in the European soccer world, an issue that has yet to be majorly addressed in any way shape or form. Just last December, a Champions League game between Paris Saint-Germain and Istanbul Basaksehir was suspended after players from both teams walked off the field, alleging that an official had used a racial slur against an assistant coach.

Bamford, in his comments about the Super League, said the quiet part out loud about European soccer. And good for him too, as he’s not wrong at all in the slightest here.

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