Gary Rowett has cast doubt on whether Marcelo Bielsa’s energetic style of football will be able to take Leeds United back to the Premier League.
The Yorkshire giants dropped down to second in the Championship table last week after a 3-1 defeat against Norwich at Elland Road last week and they could be outside of the automatic promotion spots by the time they kick off against Middlesbrough on Saturday with Sheffield United playing Aston Villa on Friday night.
Former Stoke and Derby Rowett has claimed that while he admires the way that Leeds play, he has his reservations about whether or not they will be able to keep it up for the rest of the campaign and has issued a warning about the chasing pack.
“They didn’t have a great opportunity to strengthen in this last window and if you look they’ve got a really young side, which you can applaud them for, they’ve got an incredible energy,” said Rowett on the EFL Matters podcast [18:00 onwards] on Sky Sports.
“But when you’re a team that relies on that energy so much, you wonder whether they can maintain it.
“And that’s just a question I think, it doesn’t mean that they’re not going to [get promoted].
“But if I look at the experience of some of those teams below, I think they’re certainly going to give Leeds – and Norwich – a run for their money.”
OPINION
Leeds United have had a ridiculous amount of injuries this season yet they are still second in the Championship table standings. They have had a blip before and recovered from it and Norwich are the best team in the league right now, so losing to them said more about the Canaries than it did about the Bielsa’s men. So much has happened to the Yorkshire giants this term but they are still up there, scrapping away for promotion. If there is a team that deserves promotion this season it is them. Norwich, Sheffield United, West Brom and Middlesbrough are all bound to apply the pressure between now and the end of the campaign, but Leeds have come out on top most of the times already this term. Players are starting to slowly return from injury, and that means that the Whites could be about to get a whole lot stronger.