Leeds United looked like they had pulled off quite a coup when we landed Chelsea’s Izzy Brown on a loan spell at the beginning of the season.
With the 22-year-old talent injured upon his arrival, we always knew it would take him a number of months to get up to speed as he continued his recovery but with an eye to his future which doesn’t lie at Stamford Bridge, getting him in early, supporting him and giving him plenty of time to adjust to the club could’ve been a masterstroke when it came to his future services.
The season hasn’t gone to plan though and although he’s been a regular for Carlos Corberan’s Under 23 side with their remarkable success this year, he has only nine minutes to his name under manager Marcelo Bielsa and there are only two games left in the regular season.
Yorkshire Evening Post journalist Phil Hay was speaking recently on the latest episode of the Inside Elland Road podcast and he feels that Brown’s moment to impress the Argentine gaffer has now passed.
“It does seem strange that with a few games to go you’ve got Phillips getting 45 minutes for the 23s. It’s how Bielsa likes to keep them sharp but there are so few games left you’d think it would be a case of battening down the hatches. Instead you had others involved, you had Berardi, Izzy Brown, who I am convinced is not going to play again. There just seems no way back for him.”
It does seem unlikely he’ll get into the side now given how little is left of the season and the form of others as even allowing for our recent back to back victories as we seem likely to have blown our automatic promotion hopes, Bielsa seems set when it comes to the players he will rely on the bounce back, so short of more injury pressure, I can’t see where Brown’s opportunity will come from.