What a difference a year makes for Leeds United’s Barry Douglas, in a bad way.
You have to feel a tad sorry for Leeds United’s Barry Douglas.
This time last year, he was probably dreaming about Premier League football after helping Wolverhampton Wanderers win promotion via winning the Championship, only to be sold to Leeds in July.
Fast forward a year and the Scot might be plagued by more uncertainty, this time centering around his first-team involvement with United next season.
Douglas, a £3 million signing [Sky Sports], missed the last couple of months of last season through injury, after being displaced at left-back by Ezgjan Alioski – a winger – in January.
And going into the new campaign, he could be forgiven for thinking that he is now Marcelo Bielsa’s second-choice option for that position.
Alioski is fit again after he also missed the Whites’ promotion run-in and given how well Stuart Dallas did against Derby, there’s a chance that the Northern Irishman might also be in the reckoning.
In the space of a year, Douglas has gone from looking forward to the Premier League, to not knowing if he’s going to play regularly for a Championship club.
There’s more than a hint of regression there, but there’s still a full pre-season to get through first and if he can impress Bielsa more than Alioski and Dallas, he’ll go back to being one of the first names on Bielsa’s team sheet.
If not, he could continue to go backwards in West Yorkshire.
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