Marcelo Bielsa has commented on the size of the Leeds United squad.
Leeds United’s new manager Marcelo Bielsa has told Leeds Live that he thinks the squad at Elland Road is too big by around 15 players.
The Whites appointed Bielsa as Paul Heckingbottom’s replacement earlier this month, and the Argentinian was presented to the press for the first time earlier today.
The 62-year-old is taking his first steps into English football after a legendary career to date, and he will no be charged with the task of turning Leeds into a promotion-challenging team.
Bielsa will immediately be expected to bring in new signings to boost the club, with fans expecting major reinforcements to go along with what is a quite remarkable appointment for owner Andrea Radrizzani to pull off.
However, Leeds already have a huge first-team squad, and it seems that Bielsa already has his sights set on offloading players before adding to the squad – even if he feels there are ‘four or five’ different positions where Leeds need to strengthen.
Speaking to Leeds Live, Bielsa admitted that he has watched every single one of Leeds’ 51 games from last season, and has already made his mind up about who he wants and who he will look to sell this summer.
Bielsa added that Leeds have 15 players more than they need, and he wants to offload a whole host of players in order to get the tight-knit squad he wants rather than having a number of players who aren’t playing.
“I’ve seen all 51 games played last season, plus the friendlies in Asia. I’ve got opinions and made my mind up about all the players,” said Bielsa. “But I’ve not had that day to day contact with them that the club has already enjoyed. In the same way I might get recommendations about new players, I’ve also been informed about the club’s position on how you evaluate the existing playing staff. If the club have certain players they do not want to keep, they wouldn’t be players I’m trying to keep. In terms of any player who might be leaving the club, I wouldn’t want to confuse the issue by giving an negative evaluation and description of the player, even though it might seem like that, so I’l go back to what I was saying before, the players I want to keep are the ones I want to give lots of playing time to.”
“The club have 15 players more than they need. And we still need 4 or 5 different positions on the field where we need to strengthen. I think moving forward in a football sense, the squad shouldn’t be too numerous, too many players who aren’t getting game time. So there might be some departures so the amount of players isn’t too excessive. Anybody leaving it will be more due to the fact I like a trimmed down, lean squad and the numbers in the squad so everyone is getting regular game time,” he added.
The likes of Andrew Lonergan, Laurens De Bock, Eunan O’Kane, Ouasim Bouy, Pawel Cibicki, Hadi Sacko, Luke Murphy and Marcus Antonsson may be primed for the exit door, and even more departures – potentially loans for youngsters – look to be imminent as Bielsa looks to shape his squad.
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