Marcelo Bielsa has developed quite a bad habit at Leeds.
Just 24 hours after Leeds played out a hard-fought draw against Arsenal at Elland Road, a number of their first-team stars were back in action for the U23 outfit.
The likes of Rodrigo, Ian Poveda, Helder Costa, Tyler Roberts and Pascal Struijk were involved for Mark Jackson’s side on Monday evening, and unsurprisingly, they won the game as they fielded a number of first-team regulars.
However, there is an argument to make that Bielsa is playing a dangerous game in playing his first-teamers in these fixtures.
We understand the line of thought that these guys need more match practice to get up to speed, after all, Costa, Struijk and Roberts didn’t play against Arsenal, but we’re not at the start of the season after a long pre-season campaign.
We’re almost a quarter of a way through the campaign, and in a post-pandemic world, Leeds didn’t get much of a break over the summer, so the players should be as sharp as ever.
Playing these big-money players in U23s game is just unnecessarily risking injury. Yes, Bielsa said that Rodrigo needed to get more minutes due to missing recent matches, but Costa, Poveda, Struijk and Roberts have been playing their part throughout the season.
We’re nearing the busy festive period, so if this continues, Bielsa risks burning out his players and causing injury, and we all know how destructive that can be in a squad the size of Leeds’ after their recent injury crisis at centre-back.
It’s not as though this hasn’t happened to Bielsa before either, last winter we saw Jean-Kevin Augustin bedded in via the U23s, and he picked up an injury in his first game for the youth outfit, an injury that severely affected his development at Elland Road.
That could have derailed United’s season as they looked to be desperate for a striker at the time, but fortunately, Patrick Bamford stepped up and more importantly, managed to stay fit.
There’s simply no reason to risk injuries to key players in these meaningless matches, and it’s a habit Bielsa has to kick.
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