Football clubs can be a lot like large ships. There are so many people and so many moving parts it’s difficult to be nimble. This is great when you’re heading in a desirable direction, because winning games makes you more likely to win upcoming games. Winning makes you more likely to earn more money, either through TV, league position, sponsorship deals or elevated player valuations. Once you’ve generated a bit of momentum, it’s difficult to suddenly stop and change direction.

Sadly, the same traits apply to clubs heading in the wrong direction, but with the same momentum. Losing games makes you more likely to lose upcoming games. Player confidence wanes, valuations suffer and instability follows. Managers get fired, coaching staff replaced, and years of work are thrown out of the window.

This is where Leeds have found themselves this season. Two years of Marcelo Bielsa in the Championship created an upward momentum. The players were drilled on how they needed to play. They were fit enough to execute Bielsa’s football, and recruitment broadly aligned with meeting the challenge of getting promoted. The club carried this momentum into the Premier League and through harmonious operation and buoyant spirit finished far higher than anyone could have expected.

The problem with large ships is they’re subject to an enormous amount of drag. A heavy vessel will keep heading in a given direction long after its engines have turned off, and unless you power them back on, physics will eventually bring you to a halt.

For one reason or another, Leeds’ engines turned off during this second season in the Premier League.

You could point to the injury crisis as the equivalent of broken propellers. You could suggest inadequate recruitment didn’t put enough fuel in the tank. Whatever strained maritime analogy you choose, it’s clear that RMS Leeds United simply didn’t have enough power to keep heading in the right direction.

The job, then, was to fix it.

Jesse Marsch has been handed a difficult task. Not because the squad is too poor to survive or anything as dramatic as that, but this group of players have had such a specific methodology drilled into them day after day for years. Bielsa’s methods were intense and relied on so much repetition that actions in games became instinctive rather than cognitive. These rehearsed patterns of play were scored into their brains across thousands of training sessions.

If the problem was those patterns weren’t working anymore then Jesse has to get players to unlearn things that had been made into instinctive behaviours. Like getting a young child to stop sucking their thumb or a habitual smoker to go clean. The momentum in every player’s head could still lead the club into iceberg infested waters.

Bielsa’s man-marking system seems to be the number one iceberg capable of sinking the ship. A system that worked effectively for three years when the players could win enough individual battles for the team to win enough games. Through injuries and unambitious recruitment, Bielsa could no longer field players strong enough to win enough of those battles. Unwilling to change a methodology he has spent his entire life cultivating and applying, the club felt change was needed — too complex a topic to explore here — but it means instead of trying to push on with broken propellers and limited fuel, we’re trying to fix the ship.

A congested fixture list hasn’t helped. With only a few days between Jesse’s opening games, there was little time for him to work on deradicalising the players. Recruitment can’t assist either as the transfer window is closed. Meanwhile, players are still injury magnets, and Marsch is unable to field anything resembling a first-choice eleven for a full ninety minutes.

Andrea Radrizzani believes he saw an iceberg ahead, and made some radical changes to try and steer the ship away. Jesse has managed to oversee a couple of good results, suggesting the bow of the vessel has started to swing away from tragedy. There’s a lot of football still to be played, and it’s still a big risk changing big things. The Titanic would have likely been fine if they’d have just hit the iceberg head on, keeping Bielsa and committing to pushing through the problems, whereas trying to avoid it created a long incision that breached too many watertight containers. Will Marsch steer us away from tragedy? Even if he does, would staying true to our course have been fine anyway? Who knows?

Big ships turn slowly and Leeds United were heading for disaster. Are we going to stay afloat or sink? Is anyone going to draw Raphinha like one of those French girls? Why didn’t Rose create a bit more room on that door for Jack? ⬢