Sky Sports pundit David Prutton has claimed Leeds United are on the verge of something special after a remarkable seven-match winning streak.
Marcelo Bielsa’s side are top of the Championship and six points clear of third-placed West Brom as they continue their pursuit of automatic promotion going into the new year.
Prutton hailed “world class” manager Bielsa and attacking duo Kemar Roofe and Pablo Hernandez as the three key men in the team assembled so impressively this season.
“It all means that as we pass the halfway stage of the Championship, everything at Leeds is set up unbelievably well,” Prutton told the Yorkshire Evening Post. “This is the time of year when you can allow yourself to get carried away with stuff and the time of the year where it is appropriate to say that something a little bit magical can happen.
“It feels like this set of players want to create something new, something this next generation of Leeds fans will look back on one day and remember – a team with the likes of Kemar Roofe and Pablo Hernandez together with a world class coach in Marcelo Bielsa who finally got them back to the Premier League.”
OPINION
Few Leeds fans will complain too much about the trio identified by Prutton as integral to the team’s promotion push. Certainly, Bielsa has worked wonders with the team that trailed home in 13th last season, and with only two permanent summer signings, too, and his reputation as a trailblazing coach has been enhanced by his transformation of this Leeds side. In terms of the players, Roofe has banged in 13 league goals from 18 appearances, including three in stoppage time in the last two remarkable, last-gasp wins. He is one of the hottest properties in the Championship. As for Hernandez, he is good enough on the ball to play for around a dozen Premier League clubs and it is something of a mystery that his career has been spent outside of a major league in the last four to five years. He is a maestro playing the best football of his career. Perhaps the massively improved Kalvin Phillips and defensive titan Pontus Jansson also deserve special comment, although they are probably in the bracket just below the big three.