The majority of Leeds United’s squad are actually away on international duty over the next week or so.
Of Leeds’ core first-team group, only Patrick Bamford, Crysencio Summerville, Joel Piroe, Sam Byram, Jaidon Anthony, Illan Meslier and Georginio Rutter aren’t away with their respective country, with the latter only having pulled out with injury.
There are several including the Welsh quartet who will be taking part in key qualification matches, while others such as Junior Firpo, are taking part in just friendlies.
This is actually the first time Firpo will be representing the Dominican Republic after pledging his allegiance to the country of his birth. However, it looks set to rule him out of Leeds’ first game back at Watford.
The Dominican’s final match of the international period takes place on Wednesday 27 March all the way over in Peru and will get underway at 1.30am UK time, making it an extremely tight turnaround.
Byram already a nailed on starter for Leeds
Not only will Firpo’s game not finish until the very early hours of Wednesday morning, he will then face a long period of travelling back to Leeds, giving him virtually no recovery time.
Given the injury problems he had during the first half of the season, it would be crazy to throw him in straight from the start at Watford on the Friday.
This means, that providing Byram can stay fit over the break, he is already a nailed on starter at left-back for the game at Vicarage Road, having spent the majority of the last few weeks as back-up.
Firpo has really helped elevate Leeds’ attacking threat down the left with five assists and so Byram will be tasked with doing similar against the Hornets, and he certainly isn’t a bad backup to have.
Given the short turnaround between Good Friday at Watford and Easter Monday against Hull City, perhaps a little bit of rotation won’t actually be a bad thing anyway.
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