If you listened carefully, you could have heard the sigh of relief from all the way down in Cornwall.
As Kalvin Phillips staggered back to his feet after suffering what initially looked like a serious knee injury during Leeds United’s goalless draw with Arsenal on Sunday, the West Yorkshire faithful would have been puffing out their cheeks and thanking the heavens.
Marcelo Bielsa’s team is one far greater than the sum of its parts. The team is the star at Elland Road. But the so-called ‘Yorkshire Pirlo’ is by far the closest thing Leeds have to a talismanic presence on the pitch; the one irreplaceable member of a squad of Swiss Army knife footballers famed for their flexibility.
It was no coincidence that, during two of the three games Phillips missed with a shoulder problem, Leeds conceded eight times.
Yes, there was a clean sheet in a 3-0 trouncing of Aston Villa but, if it wasn’t for a few desperate clearances and some wasteful finishing from the hosts, the scoreline could have been very different.
21-year-old Pascal Struijk did an admirable job in Phillips’ absence but an inexperienced youngster lacks the confidence in possession, or the supreme positional awareness, to act as the metronome at the heart of Biesa’s midfield.
Summer signings Diego Llorente and Robin Koch are capable of playing in the centre themselves but they, like Ben White before them, are far more comfortable in defence,
So if an opportunity emerges to sign a genuine back-up option for Phillips arrives during the winter window, expect Leeds to at least give it some consideration.
And, two months after Gazzetta dello Sport reported that the Championship champions had shown an interest in Amadou Diawara, the Roma midfielder is giving serious thought to a move away from the Scudetto dark horses.
Forza Roma claims that Diawara is concerned about his lack of game-time, having lost his place to the exceptional Lorenzo Pellegrini and Jordan Veretout.
Roma, meanwhile, will consider offers of £23 million for a back-up player who has started just 20 matches in a year-and-a-half under Paulo Fonseca.
Averaging almost 2 tackles and 1.5 interceptions per game, Diawara is as impressive with the ball as he is without it. His 89 per cent pass completion rate is actually superior to that of Phillips, even if the former is a little less ambitious in possession than a man who specialises in raking, crossfield diagonals.
In short, Diawara is the sort of reliable, astute, deep-lying ball-player who would allow Leeds, for the first time in Bielsa’s tenure, to give Phillips a rest without fearing that the team’s rhythm and balance would be skewed off course.
And, with those thumping defeats to Leicester and Crystal Palace still fresh in the memory, Leeds cannot afford to find themselves in a position where their entire game-plan lives and dies with one man.
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