Stoke clash could prove Leeds have truly moved on from reported former target Danny Batth

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Leeds United were linked with Danny Batth for ages before he joined Championship rivals Stoke City.

A lot has changed at Leeds United since they were linked with a £2 million move for Wolverhampton Wanderers captain Danny Batth in the summer of 2017 (The Mirror, July 9, page 61).

Thomas Christiansen was in the Elland Road dugout back then though if the Dane struggled to put his stamp on a team which meandered to the most disheartening of mid-table finishes, the same cannot be said of the bespectacled, bucket-perching coach now pulling the strings in West Yorkshire.

Marcelo Bielsa doesn’t care about how much lower league experience you’ve got in your locker. He wants his defenders to read the game like a best-selling novel and possess the passing range of a top-class central midfielder.

Batth, it’s fair to say, is not a player Bielsa would have singled out as a key part of his plans, despite claims from The Mirror as recently as August 2018 (30th, page 67) that he was still a target.

Now playing for Stoke, the £3 million Batth has averaged a pass completion rate of 69 per cent across the last two seasons, although it has to be said that Middlesbrough and The Potters don’t take hogging the ball quite as seriously as Bielsa.

But it’s not Batth’s passing range that has come under fire from supporters of an expensively-assembled Stoke team sitting bottom of the Championship. He was all over the place in the 3-1 defeat to Preston North End on Wednesday – and this isn’t the first time Batth has been left exposed of late.

Now, Leeds are set to travel to the Bet365 Stadium on Saturday as top-of-the-table faces bottom. And The Whites have the chance to show, once and for all, why Batth’s face would never have fit at Elland Road.

Bielsa wants ball-playing pass-masters like Ben White, not burly, old-school stoppers like Batth.