Speaking in his pre-match press conference, Marcelo Bielsa has shared why Robin Koch won’t be playing for Leeds United against Southampton.
The German, along with Mateusz Klich have been ruled out of this clash, and while their injury problems have played a part, they’re not the main reason.
Indeed, Bielsa has given both players early leave to recover in time for next month’s European Championships.
“Koch has been given early leave with the potential for him to be called up or not called up to the German national team,” Bielsa said.
“The injury that he has is not important and we didn’t want to take the risk of him playing and making it worse so we anticipated his holidays in the same way we did for Klich. In this case he wasn’t injured but we thought we could anticipate his holidays by one week, so that’s why we took the decision.”
That’s the luxury of having nothing to play for at this point of the season.
Leeds have comfortably cemented a mid-table finish, and while it would be nice for them to push to get as many points as possible, risking injury with the Euros just around the corner would be foolish.
Bielsa may be a strict taskmaster at Leeds, but he does reward his players when the job has been done and it seems as though the 24-year-old is being handled very carefully by his manager.
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