Leeds United aren’t where they want to be at the moment.
The west Yorkshire club lost against Southampton at the weekend, and they’ve lost even more ground in the race for promotion from the Championship after a slow start to the season.
Leeds have gone backwards in recent years, and now, they sit in mid-table in the Championship, a position they’ve not been in since before the days of Marcelo Bielsa.
A number of Leeds’ players just aren’t as good as they once were, and according to Paul Robinson, speaking on The Debrief, one player who has gone backwards is Illan Meslier.
The pundit was discussing Guglielmo Vicario’s strong start to life at Tottenham, and he used Meslier as an example of why it’s tough to judge a goalkeeper over a short space of time, claiming that he looked like a outstanding Premier League goalkeeper at one point before falling off.
Meslier was outstanding
Robinson spoke about the £5m Leeds player.
“Vicario is the future, but it’s difficult to do it over a number of months. We saw Illan Meslier do it at Leeds. He was outstanding, and people said he would be the next Hugo Lloris, but that was hard to sustain. It’s longevity, it’s sustainability and that’s the most important thing for a goalkeeper,” Robinson said.
Not the only one
The sad reality is that Meslier isn’t the only Leeds player who has gone backwards since that first Premier League season.
The likes of Patrick Bamford, Luke Ayling and Pascal Struijk have never hit those heights again, and, in all honesty, it’s hard to see them returning to that sort of level.
Marcelo Bielsa brought something special out of this group, and no manager has been able to recreate that since the Argentine’s departure.