Leicester City v Leeds United: Jesse Marsch has 'myriad' injury situations, gives an update on four

The American gave his first press conference at Thorp Arch ahead of the trip to Leicester City on Saturday, a game that will come too soon for Phillips and Cooper at least.

The striker was seen taking a full part in training on Thursday morning ahead of the press conference.

"I can only tell you that on Monday I met with the medical team and they introduced the whole myriad of injury situations to me," said Marsch.

"There's been a cycle of fighting and playing through injuries meaning they've picked up other injuries and put themselves in danger of missing more minutes. We want to help guys recover as quickly as possible, but not endanger or overload them or put them in situations to further be in danger of missing minutes and make sure that we have a long term vision in place for what that's going to mean.

"It's 12 games, not three or four. I know that we need points but we need to make sure we're getting stronger and not weaker. Bamford is in training, Liam and Kalvin are on the pitch working every day, closer and closer to team training, [although] not ready for Leicester. There's a bunch of other guys who have missed training - we are evaluating the risk and reward of certain players and how many minutes they'll be able to play on Saturday."

Bamford initially sat out with an ankle problem sustained at Newcastle United in September, injured his hamstring on his return as a substitute against Brentford in December and also picked up a quad problem before tearing his plantar fascia. Marsch says they're currently evaluating whether or not Bamford can make the bench for Leicester.

"It's a little bit difficult to say, we'll evaluate Patrick and what that means, can he be on the bench does he need a few more days? I can tell you he's close," said Marsch.

"Diego Llorente was not in training today, he's questionable for the weekend, with Liam and Kalvin. There are few others we're going step by step so that we can prepare them as much as possible but that we're not pressing too hard."

Phillips and Cooper also injured their hamstrings against the Bees in December. The pair both had operations and have been working their way back towards fitness ever since.