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Unprecedented World Cup pause will hand Leeds a lifeline - October 2022

Leeds United are sinking, and sinking fast. It has become such a desperate state of affairs at Elland Road that the majority of the Whites fanbase have now lost confidence in Jesse Marsch with dissent towards the American freely raining down from the terraces.

Marsch loses the Elland Road faithful

You can understand why this sense of panic has spread amongst the club’s supporters given that Leeds have collected just nine points from their opening 11 league matches this season – this is their fewest at this stage of a league campaign since 2003/04 when they managed just eight. On that occasion, no one needs reminding of how that season ended with Leeds relegated to the Championship.

 

Now, if you take into account the dire sixteen years that followed relegation in 2004 - some of the worst in the history of the club, you can better appreciate why this aforementioned panic among the fanbase has morphed into anger; Leeds shouldn’t be in this position after a summer in which the club’s hierarchy promised to have learned from their past mistakes.

The concerning reality is that they haven’t which means Leeds now face a season of meagre returns, which, sadly, is a cast-iron certainty. The only unknown at this stage is whether the Whites will manage to accumulate the necessary points needed in order to stave off relegation. Ordinarily, the outlook would be bleak and after spending last season seemingly playing a twisted version of Russian Roulette only for the club to preserve their top-flight status in the final two minutes of the season, you would have to conclude that it would be unlikely that they would be able to walk away as unscathed from this campaign. In other words, Leeds’ luck might be up.

A year like no other

This would, however, only be the case if the season was sticking to the age-old dates of a normal Premier League campaign. Leeds would, in any other season, struggle to arrest the tide after such an ominous start and would eventually be swept out to sea if the football calendar followed its usual course. But 2022 is a unique year in the history of the beautiful game given that all of the domestic leagues around the globe will pause so that a World Cup can be played over the winter in Qatar.

In total, this means that the EA Sports Premier League will be suspended for over six weeks so that a winner can be crowned in the desert. You could say that this unprecedented break will serve as a mini pre-season for clubs who will still have access to the majority of their squads. As far as Leeds go, they have as few as five players who will be departing Thorp Arch to play in the World Cup. What's more, of the five Leeds United players heading to Qatar, only one plays for a nation that is expected to progress to the knockout stages, that man is of course Diego Llorente who plays for Spain. At least, the latest World Cup betting prices La Roja at odds of just 4/6 to reach the quarter-finals which suggests that the defender will be in the Middle East for most of the tournament. As for the other four who play for America, Poland and Denmark, they all should be landing at Leeds Bradford Airport in late November or early December once the group stages conclude.

This means that for all intents and purposes, Leeds will benefit from having most of their players at the club’s training ground over the duration of the World Cup.

Time to push the reset button

Put another way, this World Cup break will provide the club with a chance to plot a new course over the second half of the season that will end in the Whites remaining a top-flight club. At this stage, it’s worth saying that this upcoming break may tempt the Leeds hierarchy to bring in a new manager so that the individual in question can benefit from having six weeks to work with this squad before the season resumes again on Boxing Day.

Whilst that may seem harsh on the very likeable Marsch, the inescapable reality is that Leeds can’t afford to wait for another chance to course correct. Is it now or never for Leeds who are at sea and going down, they must clutch onto this lifeline that is being thrown.

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