Samuel Saiz’s body-fat tests are lagging behind his Leeds United teammates and falling short of the benchmark set by Marcelo Bielsa, according to the Yorkshire Evening Post.
The newspaper claim Bielsa’s recent criticism of the Spanish playmaker was “a crack of the whip aimed at a player who has been cut adrift of a squad with impetus” in their promotion bid.
The Yorkshire Evening Post report Saiz was bottom of the pile at Leeds in their earliest running sessions in the summer and in body fat tests where the benchmark set by Biela is for players to stay under 10 per cent, the same as the leading Premier League clubs.
OPINION
Saiz is something of a throwback in terms of the way he plays and approaches the game. It is unsurprising that the £3million summer-of-2017 signing is behind pace-setters Lewis Baker, Kemar Roofe, Mateusz Klich and Adam Forshaw when it comes to pursuit of athletic excellence at Leeds. That quartet are honed machines. Saiz, by contrast, is a maverick, off-the-cuff player who is unorthodox in style and stature. That does not mean he is not invaluable to Leeds. They are at their best when the 27-year-old is designing the play, inventing and producing eye-of-the-needle passes. Saiz was brilliant in August, when he looked to have really benefited from the physically demanding Bielsa regime, but steadily tailed off to the point where he has started most of the club’s matches in the last six weeks on the bench. If the Argentine can unlock the key to getting the best from Saiz’s immense potential, Leeds’ top-two pursuit will get a huge boost.