The Athletic’s Phil Hay has been discussing Leeds United’s upcoming Premier League clash with Arsenal scheduled to take place at Elland Road this Sunday during a recent edition of his podcast.
The Whites go into this fixture off the back of two consecutive defeats in the top flight, firstly at the hands of Leicester City and then at Crystal Palace (as per BBC Sport). A question put to the journalist during the show was regarding Adam Forshaw. The central-midfield player is yet to feature for Marcelo Bielsa’s side this season through injury but Hay didn’t seem convinced Sunday would be the day of his long-awaited return. Here is what he had to say:
“No, I wouldn’t have thought so. There need to be [Under]-23s games for Forshaw, unless Bielsa’s attitude on that has changed. It’s a little while since we’ve asked him specifically, but certainly, last time we did, he was almost giving us the impression that there wasn’t an awful lot of point in persisting with that question because there still wasn’t a definite end in sight, even though Forshaw isn’t, technically speaking, miles and miles away.”
TIF Thoughts on Phil Hay’s comments regarding Adam Forshaw…
Forshaw has been out with a hip injury since September 2019 (as per Transfermarkt), missing 47 games and therefore you can understand why in Hay’s view, it’s unlikely he’ll feature versus Mikel Arteta’s side this weekend.
Are you confident ahead of the visit of Arsenal this weekend?
Yes
No
The 29-year-old signed for the Yorkshire-based club from Middlesbrough back in January 2018 in a deal reportedly worth £4.59m. However, despite being with the club for almost three years, he has been limited to just 52 appearances and so it could be argued, the Whites haven’t got the return they’d have hoped on their investment.
In our view, the journalist is correct in highlighting Bielsa’s ‘attitude’ towards the matter previously and it’s unlikely that has changed.