Gaetano Berardi and Barry Douglas will be in Leeds United’s squad for their upcoming Championship fixture.
Marcelo Bielsa has confirmed that he will name an unchanged lineup for Leeds’s trip to QPR on Tuesday, while he added that Gaetano Berardi and Barry Douglas will be on the bench for the Whites, in comments reported by Leeds Live.
Berardi has not played since October due to injury, while Douglas has been sidelined for much of 2019 – though he did play against Nottingham Forest in January and Norwich earlier this month.
The pair both featured for the under-23s in their recent draw with Forest. And ahead of Tuesday’s game at Loftus Road, Bielsa confirmed that both are expected to step up their comebacks by featuring in the matchday squad, while the starting lineup will be unchanged from the side that beat Bolton at the weekend.
“It will be the same starting XI,” he said, as reported by Leeds Live. “And Berardi and Douglas are among the 18 players. Ayling is fine.”
At this stage of the season, it is a big boost for Leeds to have the two players back. Douglas has not shown his best form and clearly faces a fight to regain his spot with Gjanni Alioski performing well at left-back, but he could make a huge difference in the promotion race if he can rediscover the form that he showed at Wolves last year.
Meanwhile, Berardi made a fantastic start to the campaign. It is easy to forget how little Pontus Jansson featured during the opening weeks of the season largely due to the club cult-hero.
And the 30-year-old can not only provide competition for Jansson and Liam Cooper at the heart of the defence, but he can also put a little pressure on Luke Ayling in what had previously been considered his best position of right-back.
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