Potential help for incoming Leeds United boss Jesse Marsch in risky sink-or-swim appointment

Faced with a job the size of Lake Michigan, it’s sink or swim for incoming Leeds United manager Jesse Marsch.
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When Marsch, a native of Racine, Wisconsin, on the banks of America’s second-most voluminous Great Lake, dares to stand where Marcelo Bielsa stood, he will face a 12-game shootout for Premier League survival.

Having presumably been analysing and preparing for a potential summer appointment, when the agenda would have been recruitment tweaks and a pre-season in which he could introduce his style, he has been parachuted into a very different job by Andrea Radrizzani and the 49ers.

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His pre-season will last but a handful of days and what he sees, when he arrives to meet the playing squad at Thorp Arch, is what he’s got to work with until such a time as Kalvin Phillips, Liam Cooper and Patrick Bamford make what Leeds believe will be swift returns. Players he might have been categorising as ones to move on in the summer, will now be those he must move to run through brick walls for him in pursuit of vital wins.

His style isn’t so alien from Bielsa’s that he will have too much intense deprogramming at this stage yet the time in which to make any kind of stamp on the team is so short that he will have to prioritise and laser in on the most crucial changes to the way these players have been programmed to play. Bielsa had 51 days between his appointment and his first game in the Championship. In 82 days’ time, the season will be over and Marsch will either begin planning for his first full campaign as a Premier League manager or, along with everyone at Leeds, face an uncertain future. The good news is that Marsch will find a group of players who threw themselves into Bielsa's plan with total abandon. Their willingness to go the extra kilometre and complete the extra sprint will be invaluable.

Managing the players, who looked so shy of confidence against Spurs on Saturday and have gone through an emotional ringer in the hours and days since, is just one part of Marsch’s job. Managing the atmosphere he finds himself walking into, the expectations of an unsure fanbase and inevitable comparisons to Bielsa might be more complicated.

Sunday’s official confirmation of the Argentine’s sacking began a period of mourning and the grief had not yet run its course before Marsch arrived in Yorkshire. Radrizzani’s feeling that the club needed saving from their saviour was evidently not shared by a huge section of the support and it is to a fanfare of wailing and gnashing of teeth that Marsch must introduce himself.

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He will hear Bielsa’s name chanted at Leicester and again at Elland Road when Aston Villa visit. The hope for Radrizzani and his new manager is that, by the time the Villains arrive, fans have also begun to sing Marsch’s name. Winning one of his first two is crucial. If Leeds can’t manage that, they at least need to show a more resolute defence, fewer individual errors and a competitiveness that breeds both confidence and hope. Losing both of those games will turn Elland Road into a bag of nerves for the Norwich City game.

BIG JOB - Jesse Marsch has the task of keeping Leeds United afloat in the Premier League after replacing Marcelo Bielsa. Pic: GettyBIG JOB - Jesse Marsch has the task of keeping Leeds United afloat in the Premier League after replacing Marcelo Bielsa. Pic: Getty
BIG JOB - Jesse Marsch has the task of keeping Leeds United afloat in the Premier League after replacing Marcelo Bielsa. Pic: Getty

Like a new player coming into training and having a pass fired viciously into his feet, Marsch has next to no time to settle before being tested in his new surroundings. How’s your first touch? One way he can begin to help supporters overcome their sadness at the loss of Bielsa is proving to them, early on, that the football is still going to be good to watch.

It’s not going to be Bielsaball; how could it? But Leeds will press aggressively and hunt the ball, in order to score goals, and will look to get forward quickly. There will be speed and there will be intensity. Leeds fans will respond to that and, if the side puts the ball in the net, they can respond in only one way.

Other than the way his team plays, the reassurance he might be able to give through press conferences, his demeanour and, of course, his results, Marsch can’t do a lot else about the way fans feel towards him or how much they miss Bielsa. Often, a manager will act as a lightning rod for a club’s ownership or its chairman but, whether he likes it or not, Radrizzani may experience an uncomfortable and unfamiliar role reversal, at least in the short term at Leeds until the team’s fate becomes clear. That might help Marsch too. No matter how dedicated a Bielsista you might consider yourself, there is no reasonable way that any blame can be assigned to the new manager for the fate that befell the previous one. The expectation is that, once he’s wearing Leeds colours, Leeds will back Marsch. There really is no other option. He will need help, the players will need help and the club must now pull together.

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If Marsh sinks, so too will Leeds. If he swims and the club stays afloat in the Premier League then he will have passed an acid test and taken a big step towards the affections of supporters. As much as Radrizzani has taken one of his ‘calculated risks’, Marsch is taking a leap of faith and backing himself in the tightest of spots. He who dares, must win.