Jesse Marsch admits Leeds Utd summer transfer need hasn’t gone away while outlining biggest Orta strength

Jesse Marsch has spoken positively of the “clarity” provided by Leeds United director of football Victor Orta ahead of the January transfer window.

There were several changes to the squad Marsch inherited at Leeds over the summer. Now, as January approaches, the club will have to work out their plans again.

After 13 games, Leeds are 12th in the Premier League. In terms of points, though, they are closer to the relegation zone than the top half.

Therefore, there are a few areas of their squad they might want to address in order to stay clear of danger.

Now, Marsch has confirmed plans are being made for their project. Within his preview of the January window, he suggested Leeds could still be looking for another striker.

Meanwhile, their second task is to be wary of interest in their own promising prospects.

Whatever happens, though, director of football Orta will be playing his part in finding available options – which Marsch welcomes.

The head coach said at a press conference: “We’ve spoken a bit you know, I think in general whenever I look at windows I look at it as you know, sort of piece by piece and window by window. And I mean there’s the two-month project and what we think we need right now, then eight months and what is 14 months and trying to piece together how the cycle will present itself.

“We have targets. You know, I think we’re smart enough to know that in order to achieve our goals, we want to continue to look at every position and think about how we can move forward in the right way.

“We also know that I think we have some young talented players that will continue to draw interest and so trying to figure out how to keep those players, how long we can keep them, what can entice them to stay and what that means to the pieces that we might need moving forward.

“I don’t want to talk specific about positions. You know we talked enough about the striker position in the summer and I don’t think that that’s gone away. But I think we’re active, we’ve been active.

“This is one of the best parts about working with Victor is his clarity on what the market is and what’s available and what are good fits for how we’re trying to play football is quite good.”

Jesse Marsch previews Tottenham trip

Marsch was speaking in view of Leeds’ last game before the World Cup break. They are due to visit Tottenham on Saturday for a 3pm kick off.

Providing injury updates for the match, Marsch said: “Adam Forshaw has been training hard back out on the pitch and if the Tottenham match was maybe three days later, we would consider him probably eligible for the match. But it at least means that he should be ready, when we get back after the World Cup to get into training and get himself back to 100%.

“Stuart’s making great progress as well and we’ll see how that goes but maybe we get him on the pitch at some point towards the end of December, early January.

“And then Patrick is out for this match. Still hasn’t recovered. Klichy, he took a knee-to-knee knock in the match against Wolves and he’ll be out and then the other one is Jack Harrison is a little bit questionable with a muscle strain. But we’re hopeful that in the next 24 hours he can recover and be available for tomorrow as well.”

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