'Matter of time' - Marcelo Bielsa favourite sends promising Leeds United Championship promotion message
Leeds United will hope to go one better when their 2024/25 Championship campaign kicks off on Saturday.
Adam Forshaw expects Leeds United to be ‘right up’ in the Championship promotion mix again this season after falling at the final hurdle less than three months ago.
Leeds kick off their second consecutive Championship campaign at home to newly-promoted Portsmouth on Saturday, having come within 90 minutes of an instant return to the Premier League in May. Daniel Farke’s side racked up an incredible 90 points but that was only good enough for the play-offs and after beating Norwich City over two legs, a damp final display at Wembley saw them beaten 1-0 by Southampton.
Forshaw tasted play-off heartbreak during his five-and-a-half year spell at Leeds, although he was absent through injury for the dramatic semi-final second-leg defeat at home to Derby County in Marcelo Bielsa’s first year at Elland Road. But the midfielder then experienced the ecstasy of regrouping to win the title and expects a similar season in West Yorkshire this time round.
“The passion of the city is what makes Leeds special,” he told The Athletic. “The people inside the club, I made friends for life and I still play golf with physios and fitness staff who were there before me and are still there now. The people make the club and it’s got a lot of history. It’s a matter of time before they get promoted again. They weren’t far away last season and they’ll be right up there again this season.”
Forshaw might soon be back at Elland Road, having joined Championship rivals Plymouth Argyle in January of this year. But at 32-years-old and off the back of horrible injury luck, eyes may soon turn to the future and a potential career in coaching.
The midfielder was fortunate enough to join Leeds a few months before Bielsa’s arrival and admits he learned so much from the now legendary Argentinian. But the man who replaced him, Jesse Marsch, has also left a positive mark.
“He made me think more than anyone (about going into management), as I was starting to get to an age where I was thinking about coaching more and more,” the midfielder added of Bielsa. “His elite mentality in terms of the environment and the rules was like I’d never seen.
“Jesse Marsch was a lovely fella and he had his own style coming from the Red Bull model. I took a lot from that time with him, we were really at good counter-pressing. I’ve learned from every manager, there are things you can take from everyone and if you could take all the best parts of every manager then you’d like to think you could do OK.
“His man-management was really good. It’s just unfortunate, some managers have had tough times at lots of places and he probably feels like he was hard done by when he got sacked. Sadly, that’s the nature of the beast with that job title.”