A potential return to Elland Road as the opposition manager was one of the factors in him choosing not to take the Southampton and Leicester jobs, although it was not the only reason. “[The] Southampton [offer], it was right after Leeds. Literally days. I was very serious about it. I could see internally they had a few different ideas on the direction they were moving forward … but wonderful people.
“Leicester I was incredibly close to taking but in the end I just felt that I wasn’t ready to jump back in. In hindsight I think it’s a wonderful club and a great place and maybe if my mindset had been in a different place I could have – and should – have maybe taken that job.”
He is back in London this week to catch up with contacts and we speak via Zoom – with my end of the conversation in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It has taken Marsch time to get over Leeds. He had replaced Marcelo Bielsa, one of the most popular managers in the club’s history, saved Leeds from relegation in May last year and begun rebuilding the team in his own style through two transfer windows. But by February a run of seven games without a win, and just about every relegation-threatened club making changes, created a pressure he believes the club found impossible to ignore.
Marsch is clear: by February his Leeds team were making progress. Every metric he considers important was improving and after his departure he says those went into decline – a point borne out by the statistics included on this independent analysis.
“I agree we should have won more games than we did,” Marsch says. “Even though from the outside it looked like the team wasn’t as good as it should have been. We were in control of more matches and weren’t getting the points we frankly deserved. That is what put stress on the environment and that is what put stress on the decision-makers in the club. In terms of what the work was like, and what it was like to be with the team, and the passion, work ethic and commitment from the group, it was outstanding.”
The plan had been to replace Bielsa in the summer of last year but as results declined, Leeds’ then director of football Victor Orta and chair Andrea Radrizzani asked that Marsch come early, at the end of February. The 12 weeks which culminated in a final day win away at Brentford, and Premier League survival, Marsch says was “the best work I have done in my career”. He had to adjust his wider plans for the team and find answers to difficult questions.
“I don’t think we ever played perfect football,” he says. “At that moment it was more of a psychological project than it was anything else. That part, along with the training and ideas, I’m really proud of – and that we managed the situation. It felt like we won a title.”
‘You can see the team was really starting to come together’
Leeds started last season like a train with seven points from their first three but then only won twice more before the break for the World Cup, albeit one of those at Anfield at the end of October.
“I felt after the World Cup our progress was starting to take hold,” Marsch says. “If you look at metrics you can see the team was really starting to come together. If we get a couple more wins the stress levels are different and the pressures on decision-makers are different. I think we were on track to finish the season strong. When those decisions [on his sacking] get made you’ve to accept them, hard as it is. And then you have to figure out how to move on with relationships and your life and your profession.”
At the end, as the club went from Michael Skubala to Javi Gracia to Allardyce, it felt chaotic. A club who were just clutching at strategies that might work. Marsch considers that. “I would say one of the things I am proud of is that it was chaos before I came – 7-0 [against Manchester City in December 2021], 6-0 [Liverpool in the following February] – incredible losses and the most amount of goals conceded in a month in the Premier League [20 in February].
