OPINION
Leeds fans had high hopes for Izzy Brown but it just hasn’t happened for the Chelsea youngster and it now looks unlikely that he’ll be seen in a Leeds shirt again.
Talking on the latest episode of the Inside Elland Road podcast (37 mins) senior Leeds journalist Phil Hay said that the player must be wondering what he’s doing at Leeds.
Brown has only made a nine-minute cameo for the first-team and that was a bit of a disaster. Coming on when the side was 1-0 down to QPR , Brown looked like a deer in the headlights and his appearance was notable only for an instant yellow card that he picked up.
He played for the Under-23s again on Monday and went off injured in the second half and Hay thinks that’s it for Brown and that Bielsa would prefer to use Ryan Edmondson.
“Do you think, you said he [Brown] came off with an ankle injury and he doesn’t feel like Bielsa’s player anyway,” Hay said. “On the basis of watching that on Monday, if there was a sudden gap for a striker, attacking player, whatever, in the play-offs that you’d be more inclined to go with Edmondson rather than Brown, because one of them is bang in form and has been for ages, the other I suspect has no idea what he’s doing here and no idea what the past eight-nine months has really been about.”
YEP journalist Joe Urquhart agreed with him. “Yeah, I think if you were giving me a choice between the two and Roofe and Bamford were out and you didn’t want to play Tyler Roberts up front, I’d choose Edmondson every time.
“Like you say, the form he is in, the hunger he’s shown for the Under-23s, not to say Brown isn’t trying, but he looks very laboured and disenchanted with his career, probably wondering what he’s doing here. You’d be more inclined to throw Edmondson a bone and I would and he’d run for days for you.”
That’s pretty damning for Brown, a player who is reportedly on £25k-a-week on his Chelsea contract.
Edmondson is 17 and has only made two cameo appearances for Leeds last season. That he would be preferred over Brown is a sure sign that the costly gamble that Leeds took with the Chelsea attacker just hasn’t paid off at all. And that Brown will not play-on any part in the play-offs.