Leeds United boss Jesse Marsch's pre-Arsenal press conference every word: Dallas and Cooper updates, Bamford plan

Jesse Marsch will be with us shortly and we will have all the news here.

Jesse takes his seat

“I want to start with Stuart Dallas. He had a successful surgery. It was a long surgery, five and a half hours, but they believe that the outcome was very positive. And, you know, they say it’ll be a long recovery, but they believe that he will have a full recovery. He has had something like 400 or 500 messages from fans, family and friends, we know that he’s loved and I think that this moment proved that more than anything. You know, I don’t want to speak for Stuart but but, you know, I’ve heard he’s been very appreciative of so many people reaching out and extending their concerns and their love for him. We all hope the absolute best for Stuart and and we hope that he is soon pain free and and back here in the training centers so that we can really start his recovery. And then on the other injury front, Patrick has been on the pitch so we remain cautiously optimistic with that and Tyler, Adam and Cree are all moving in the right direction. Liam Cooper trained today, Diego trained today so we should have other than those four-five guys we should have our full complement of players.”

“Yeah, I think you know, I think we can safely say it’ll be six months, but it could be longer and I don’t think anyone wants to rush him. I think the bone has to heal. And then they have to look at all the things like articular cartilage and the meniscus and which everything seems to be relatively intact so the ACL is intact. I’m not a doctor but a lot of the main structure of the knee is in place and then it’s just got to heal a little bit over time and and see how it reacts to more and more. And then, yeah, we all know Stuart is such a big part of the group. He’s such a fantastic person and player. I think he had the current ongoing record for most consecutive matches. So he’s also an Ironman. It’s motivation for us, but more importantly, I think it’s an indicator for the fact that Stuart will be backing stronger than ever.”

“I think so. He, again, I watched him on the pitch a bit today and he was moving really well. Doing a lot of ball work. Relatively active, dynamic and so I think, you know, we still have two and a half weeks, and we’ll go step by step but, but we are hopeful that we can get them into training by next week.”

“No, I don’t. I think, I guess the advantage is if you get the result then it puts a little pressure on the teams to play after. But going into the last match, I don’t think we even knew what the what the results were going in. And then if you lose, it can be a disadvantage. So the key is to, again, try to do everything you can to control your own results. That’s it. That’s my strategy in this whole process.”

“I actually think Liam will play. He was full in training today and felt good and so I think he’ll be available.”

What is his injury?

“They call it the fat tab, which I don’t know what that means. But it’s not a muscle. It’s something in his knee that is like a lubricant. But he’s he’s feeling good.”

“To try to win the game for sure. I think we respect Arsenal a lot. They have a lot of quality players and they’ve developed a lot over the past few years with Arteta. And we know that we’ve already gone over a lot of what we want the game to look like and what their strengths are and and so we know it’s a good team and it’s a version of Man City. They like to spread the field, they like to play with combinations, they’re very good passing team, they have very good movement so it’s about our ability to limit that and then our ability still to command the game with the ball and and be good at possession and then be good in transition phases. So one thing that was also disappointing in the Man City game, we’ve been relatively stable in defensive set pieces and then we give up two (goals). So we talked through that a little bit today and worked on that again on the pitch, but I expect us to be better with that in the next four games.”

“I think our group has a very strong belief in themselves. And since I’ve been here, we’ve tried to ease the pressure of every moment and enjoy the process more and still then be ready to go out and compete for everything on match day and execute a match plan that gives us a chance to pick up points. In many ways, even with the Man City game, I was very pleased with that process and and the way we played. But, you know, against the best opponents you have to be really, really good on the day, the margin of error is so thin, and we have to find a way to be razor sharp. So that’ll again be the emphasis going into this game against Arsenal.”