Leeds United's answer to Premier League complacency lies with those who have something to prove - Daniel Chapman

With 14 games to go, the Premier League has given Leeds United another of its strange gifts: the season is over.

According to data analysis website FiveThirtyEight, the Peacocks have a less than one per cent chance of either winning the league, qualifying for Europe, or being relegated.

Another day, another existential crisis in the Best League in The World. Somebody remind me why we lusted so long for a league that’s over before February is?

What’s the difference, anyway, between getting battered around 6-2 by Manchester United, and 7-3 by Nottingham Forest? Both were probably Tom Lees’ fault!

And what’s the difference between mid-table stasis in the Championship and our months ahead, drifting glitzily in the Premier League?

All that’s left to play for is prize money for finishing further up the table, and that’s gauche. Although there is an alternative, and that’s purity.

Without the pressure of promotion and relegation, the remaining games can be good, old-fashioned sporting tests. The only reason we’re playing Southampton tonight is to see if our team can play better than theirs, and I love that.

I wonder, though, what the players make of it. This is a team that has thrived on drive. Since Marcelo Bielsa arrived, every day has been about proving themselves.

Proving they were good enough for his team, good enough for promotion, good enough to handle the pressure, good enough for the Premier League. I think they’ve made their point. But with nothing left to prove, and their target for this season not just met but exceeded, can they keep that momentum rolling?

And should they lose it, can they recapture it next season when they start again? United’s last big, sad sigh in the Championship was the end of the 2017/18 season, under Paul Heckingbottom.

Both Pontus Jansson and Samu Saiz put it down to knowing the play-offs were out of reach. With nothing to play for, they ‘stopped playing’, and boy could you ever tell.

It’s hard to imagine our players halting that way under Bielsa but, then, it was hard to imagine them improving so much in the first place.

And, after nearly three full seasons of total intensity, some of them must be tempted by thoughts of a rest.

Last week Mateusz Klich told Radio Leeds he’s looking forward to a long-overdue summer holiday. Perhaps he’s forgotten he’ll be playing for Poland in the European Championships.

Bielsa’s approach will be interesting. After the Arsenal game, he spoke about how, without a large budget for new signings, Leeds must count on players from the Academy.

“To be able to do this, the young players need minutes,” he said. “And, in some way, this is what Leeds are trying to do.”

That makes the rest of this season an opportunity for players like Jamie Shackleton, and, in particular, Tyler Roberts.

Roberts got his third start of the season against Wolves, and the brunt of the criticism on social media because, apparently, he’s not Neymar.

Or, more specifically, he hasn’t kicked on; his flashes of talent are not enough, he doesn’t look up to the Premier League, and he smiled too much in his post-match interview.

There’s some truth in it. Since signing from West Brom in January 2018, Roberts has been hampered by injuries and the players ahead in the queue.

His appearances have been sporadic, flitting from frustrating to nifty.

As it goes, in his last few games, he was crucial to Jackie Harrison’s goal at Newcastle – a replica of Roberts’ own at Hull last spring – got an assist at Arsenal and was a VAR pixel line from another at Wolves.

His stats for creating chances from open play have been coming close to Raphinha’s. And the criticism has echoes from those slow months at the end of 2017/18.

Reviewing social media from that April, the player who fans said hadn’t developed, who was destined for Guiseley in three years, who smiled too much for Facebook’s liking and was worrying more about his hair than passing straight, was a certain Kalvin Phillips.

Phillips was underwhelming at that point, true. He was also four months older than Tyler Roberts is now, and he was doing his disappointing in the bottom half of the Championship, whereas Roberts is finding his feet in the Premier League.

It’s hard to argue that Roberts is showing less than Phillips at the same age, and look how Kalvin turned out. Three years later, I don’t think Guiseley will be making a bid.

The argument can only be won by playing and proving it, though, and maybe the restful weeks ahead are the opportunity Roberts needs. And what Leeds United need, too.

The answer to complacency lies with the players who have something still to play for.