West Ham United’s Michail Antonio has warned, Jesse Marsch, that’s it’s going to be ‘near-on impossible’ to get the Leeds United players to adapt to his style at such short notice.
The American has 12 games to help Leeds survive, but Antonio thinks he will face a ‘difficult’ period once the first few matches are out of the way, as the West Ham striker told the Footballer’s Football podcast.
Marsch is an attack-minded coach, but the biggest problem he is going to face is trying to stop the leakiest defence in the Premier League from picking the ball out of their own net time and time again.
Leicester City will be their first opponents, with a certain Jamie Vardy back from injury and scoring upon his return at Burnley in midweek.
Nonetheless, from the perspective of a player, this is what West Ham’s £7 million player (Sky Sports) had to say about Marsch and him having to adapt and change things during these final games of the season.
“It’s going to be difficult,” said Antonio. “He’s going to come in with the same philosophy, or close to Bielsa.
“But to get players that are used to a certain way of playing during the last two or three years, to change and adapt to his way of playing over 12 games, as much as I don’t want to say it, but it’s going to be near-on impossible to do.
“He needs a summer. He needs that time to get them into shape. Get them to play how he wants.
“I feel possibly he might win the first two or three games, but once his philosophy kicks in and they have to change from how Bielsa was playing to how he wants to play, that’s when the difficult times will come. That’s when they will be stuck in limbo.”
If Leeds are to go down, then there might just be some fans who feel that they would have preferred getting relegated with Bielsa at the helm.
The Whites will be in a spot of bother if the worst-case scenario becomes reality because they all know how difficult it is down in the lower leagues.
But, if Marsch can march them to Premier League status for the next campaign, then they can start to dream big and do things that Bielsa just simply didn’t want to do.
One of them is adding some much-needed depth and quality all over the pitch because that is what has hurt the club the most.
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