Ex-Man City man backs old boss Jesse Marsch's Leeds United survival bid for two reasons

Ex Manchester City and Chelsea man Shaun Wright-Phillips played for Marsch in the 2015 MLS season for New York Red Bulls, having impressed the head coach while training with the side to get fit having left Queens Park Rangers.

He recalls a boss who demanded everything from his players.

"As a person he’s very emotionally attached to people giving 110 per cent and that’s not just in the game, it’s in training as well," Wright-Phillips told FreeSuperTips."Even when he’s in your 5-a-side team, if you don’t cover a man by a yard, he’ll be screaming at you and then he’ll go make a slide tackle to make up for it.

"We’ve always had good chemistry together, so for me he was a brilliant coach to have. Obviously now his coaching would have evolved because he’s not at New York Red Bulls anymore. He’s been to a few different clubs; he’s had to learn different tactics and how to combat other things."

Marsch arrived at Elland Road last Monday and immediately set to work introducing a new style of defending to try and shore up Leeds' leaky defence. The man-to-man marking system favoured by Marcelo Bielsa had become seriously problematic and Marsch's predecessor himself admitted it needed to improve after heavy defeats by Everton, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur.

With Bielsa gone, the new man in charge has changed the way Leeds defend, not only in open play but at set-pieces. They will still press with intensity, as the front four showed to good effect at times against Leicester City in the American's first game in the technical area, but they will no longer stick closely to their man and follow him wherever he goes.

Wright-Phillips believes that, and the quality Marsch is due to welcome back from the treatment room in the next couple of weeks, will be key for the Whites' survival hopes.

"When you go into the Champions League, there’s a lot of teams who know how to beat the press, so the next question you ask is when that happens, where do you go from there?" he asked.

"I think he would have added that to his criteria and I think he’ll do a good job at Leeds because he’ll nullify their biggest weakness currently which is the man-to-man marking. The players were following their men all over the pitch which left massive holes with nobody covering which is where Leeds are being countered. It got to a point where they just simply conceded too many goals, so he’ll come in and try to change that.

"I think he’ll keep Leeds up; it’ll be hard [not getting off] to a winning start, but they have enough quality in there.

"Especially when Kalvin Phillips comes back and if they can get Patrick Bamford back fit. They’ll have too much quality to go down."