A pair of remarkable wins by Jesse Marsch’s Leeds United in their last two games has perhaps pulled the American coach out of the hot seat, but has left him lamenting the often round-about way the team earns results.
The latest outing by Leeds over the weekend against Bournemouth was perhaps their most remarkable and stress-inducing so far of the still-young season.
After blowing an early lead, they found themselves down by a 3-1 margin shortly after the half, only to storm back for an improbably 4-3 victory when it was all said and done.
This directly followed a shocking win over Liverpool the previous weekend, a result which ended an eight-game winless run in league play, which had Marsh’s name increasingly being thrown about as the next victim of the Premier League coaching carousel.
The pair of results did pull Leeds three points clear of the drop zone, and even with a visit to fourth-place Tottenham being their last league game before the long break, their barely-underwater goal differential will likely see them remain in the safe places through Christmas.
“It’s hard to put it into words and really describe exactly what happened,” Marsh explained in his comments to the press. “At halftime, we tried to instill belief in the team that we could still manage to find the result.”
The former Red Bull Leipzig coach was clearly successful in motivating his team based on the result at the final whistle, however he could already see that the team was on-program to fight for the come-back result before they took the field for the second half.
“I told them after the match that the best part was that I could tell from the looks on their faces that I didn’t have to convince them,” he grinned. “They believed it. I think the second half perfomance exemplified that.”
“The sad part is that we made it even more difficult by going down 3-1,” he laughs in reference to the 48th-minute Bournemouth goal that put them ahead by two goals, “but the guys stuck with it.”
“I keep hearing that [at] Leeds we do it the hard way,” he chuckled, adding with a smile “I’m hating that, really.”
“But [we’re] trying to stay strong and positive, and [to] exhibit belief in what we’re doing. You can see that the payers have [that belief] as well.”
Marsch and his squad will momentarily turn their focus away from the Premier League when they visit Wolves in the EFL Cup on Wednesday, then head to London for their showdown with Tottenham on Saturday.
