Leeds United weren’t too busy during the January transfer window, but they did make a couple of signings – one of which being Ian Poveda from Manchester City.
However, the 20-year-old is yet to make a senior appearance for the club despite arriving with plenty of praise from Premier League-winning manager Pep Guardiola and former Whites goalkeeper Paul Robinson.
Would you like to see more of Ian Poveda in these nine games?
Absolutely!
No way!
The Citizens boss labelled Poveda as a player with “incredible power to develop” and one that suited Marcelo Bielsa’s system to a tee whilst Robinson claimed that the Argentine knows the young winger is a “top, top player”.
So why haven’t we seen much of him? Well, The Athletic’s Phil Hay has provided the latest on the situation in a recent Q&A, he said…
“I haven’t heard any more about him in the past couple of months. It was slightly strange with him – he came in, trained well and made a couple of matchday squads but then disappeared from view completely. With Bielsa, you automatically assume that Poveda wasn’t hitting the right levels of fitness or performance. That tends to dictate Bielsa’s selection policy and to the best of our knowledge, Poveda hasn’t been injured.”
Poveda featured on the bench for games against Millwall and Wigan Athletic but hasn’t been named in a matchday squad since February 1st.
Hay claims that the England U20 international isn’t injured, which makes everything all that more baffling considering Bielsa is only really able to call upon Jack Harrison and Helder Costa out wide.
He does go on to explain that it could be because Poveda isn’t hitting Bielsa’s standards in training, and as we know by now, we should trust the 64-year-old by now.