Leeds United’s U23s have been on fire this season.
They top their PL2 group and they’re on a winning run that doesn’t look like ending anytime soon.
A lot has been made of the likes of Joe Gelhardt, Sam Greenwood and Cody Drameh, but one man who doesn’t seem to be making headlines is Liam McCarron, but everything you see and hear about this young man points towards him being a perfect player for Marcelo Bielsa.
The young winger has been making waves over the past 12 months earning his first Scotland U21s call-up last summer, and he’s been playing plenty of football for Mark Jackson’s side this term, even scoring three goals.
Of course, the one thing you want to see above anything else in a young player is a willingness to learn and an ability to improve, and that’s exactly what McCarron has shown in his career thus far.
Indeed, his former Carlisle coach’s comments make for interesting reading.
“At 15 he was blessed with loads of pace, which is why we took a chance on him, but he was a young boy who would get very frustrated very quickly,” Darren Edmondson once said about McCarron.
“As he’s matured and come into full-time football, that’s been the biggest change in him. If he makes a mistake now, his work rate is unbelievable.”
The interesting thing to note here is that the 20-year-old was actually proactive in his pursuit of improving his work rate – it wasn’t just something that came naturally to him.
Back in 2017, McCarron claimed that one area he needed to improve was tracking back and helping the team defend, and lo and behold, within a couple of years he was in the first-team being praised for how hard he works.
That’s exactly the type of attitude you want a young player to have – he’s spotted his an issue and worked to fix it very quickly, and if he can continue to improve the weak spots in his game, he could blossom into a very talented player.
Now consider the fact that his manager is Bielsa – a man renowned for improving footballers whose attention to detail is second to none.
The Argentine has been lauded as one of the best coaches in the world, so it won’t take long for him to spot areas on McCarron’s game that need some work, and if the former Carlisle man can approach every element of his development with the same sort of attitude he had when he realised his workrate needed to improve, he could become a star under Bielsa.
The other comments made by Edmondson also make for great reading. McCarron is a rapid winger who likes to work hard, and that sounds like an absolute dream for Bielsa.
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