"Frankly totally ridiculous" - every word from Leeds United boss Jesse Marsch's pre-Leicester City press conference

“I think this first came up when I was at Salzburg. And I even remember them seeing the players walk out to the match with the T shirts. What did it say? It said fair play or open play is fair play. I can’t remember exactly what the t shirt said. But I thought that was a big statement for Leeds United to have that and I agreed and in Salzburg, I said this and I’ll say it here,no one wants a league that’s not about earning and deserving it and no one wants to see a league that’s just given. I think already in our sport, the world is imbalanced, right? Okay, you can argue clubs like Manchester United and Real Madrid and you can go down the list that over the years they’ve had a built in success and that’s helped them accumulate more and more interest and more and more value and more and more riches. But I’m an American. I come from American sports where parity is is the most important thing to us. At the start of the season, anyone can win. And then I was a coach in the Bundesliga where Bayern Munich had made 30.5 times or spent 30.5 times the amount of Arminia Bielefeld. And it’s a league where when you start you say Bielefeld has zero chance of winning the league and Bayern Munich has 75 per cent of winning the league. That’s not competition to me. And that’s what I want to see is I want to see fairness. I want to see people have to earn whatever they deserve, or deserve whatever they earn, whatever and I think that any idea of the Super League is frankly totally ridiculous. Is that strong enough?!”

Pascal Struijk injured and Firpo to start is the top news. Big support for Bamford, Rodrigo, Firpo and Ayling too. Gnonto will be part of the squad, and Joffy, and Greenwood. Full transcribe of every word to follow

“Yeah, that’s how we feel. We feel that we’ve clearly made progress as a group. I’ve said a lot. I have sat here a lot and said we like our team, that we feel we have potential in this group. But it’s been hard for us to pick up the points that often we feel that we’ve deserved. Often it comes in the form of not scoring enough goals which helps you command the game more the way you would want to, not having enough leads. But we have to just stay strong in our belief and in our work and know that with the law of averages or how that if we keep developing in this way, that eventually we’re going to put ourselves in a position to be successful. So it’s hard, like I’ve said a few times, but we have to stay positive and focused on the next match and and make sure that we do everything we can now to fight for every single point.”

“I know that with our team, you know. I appreciate that Marc says that and a few of the guys have come out publicly very positive about a lot of things but I know by what I see every day by the work that I see from the group every day that everybody’s fully committed and the belief level is really high. But that’s why the results become important. It’s even less to do with where we are on the table and more just that we need that validation and we need that feeling of knowing that the work that we’re doing is is the right work and it’s going to lead us to where we want to go. I know that, based on my experiences in this business, I know that you can’t focus too much on results, but that results always help bread positivity so that’s where we’re at.”

“You know what’s funny is it’s been, I think our last one win was a couple months ago, right? But it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like the work has been really good. It feels like a lot of the performances haven’t been complete but have been solid. I feel like we’re developing and growing. And then it’s just the unforgiveness of what this league is and sometimes doing everything right doesn’t mean you get the result. And I feel like we’re doing a lot of the things right. I feel like the concentration to improve and to be good and to win has been spot on. But the opponents are always also quite good”

“I spoke with them a couple of weeks ago, and I said, I introduced 13 phrases when when I first came, and they were counter pressing, pressing things like this. One of them is a phrase I use 100-70 which is the ability to still play with tempo and speed but in your head to slow yourself down so that you can see plays clearly ,that you can make attacking plays that you can still play with quality in the last third. I ask them to run so much and to be so intensive, that getting that balance right, we’re still trying to to develop that. However, I thought Arsenal was a fantastic display of our ability to win balls and then create big chances, it just wasn’t enough to finish them off. I’m pleased with a lot of our attacking players and I think in many ways, they’re they’re playing well. It’s just we got to help them now make the last step and in finding more goals. I believe in them though, totally and I know we’ll get there.”