Let’s not beat about the bush, nor make any bones about this, Leeds United are in a cyclonic drop of form and things aren’t looking good with hard games coming up thick and fast.
For the Whites, it’s 31 games gone and 15 to go as they look to cap their centenary season with promotion to the Premier League. That promotion looked more secure half-a-dozen games back but looks on extremely dodgy ground now. A string of dire performances from game-to-game has seen Leeds pick up just one win in their last six games – four of which they’ve failed to score in.
When it comes to scoring, the blame usually is cast by disgruntled fans firmly at the feet of a club’s striker and that has certainly been the case at Leeds with Patrick Bamford coming in for fair pelters from fans as the goals dry up for both him and the team.
Not only is it the lack of goals situation that is bothering the fans about Patrick Bamford, but it is also the fact Marcelo Bielsa’s steadfast loyalty to his players sees him getting picked time after time after time as the first-choice striker for the Whites.
Fair enough, beforehand there wasn’t really a viable option to replace him what with Bielsa’s pared-down squad stretched to threadbare and the only other options coming via a pool of untested Under-23 players. However, the signing of French striker Jean-Kevin Augustin changes that.
Bielsa had resisted the clamouring of Leeds United fans to throw him into the mix with immediacy, the former France youth international being bloodied via two Under-23 appearances against Sheffield Wednesday (on Monday evening) and Derby County (Friday evening). He had 45-minute outings in both those games as he looked to get up to speed fitness-wise and with Bielsa’s system.
With Bamford firing blanks against Forest, the side where he started his career, Augustin finally got to pull on a shirt for his first-team debut for the Whites. The Frenchman had six touches of the ball in the 19-or-so minutes he was on the field but, more importantly, two of those were goalbound attempts. The first was a fiercely driven shot and the second a header that was deflected behind for a corner.
With Leeds being in a rut, with Bamford facing a sporadic run of goals, one question surely must be asked. When will the Bamford loyalty test be applied and Augustin pushed into the starting limelight?
