This season is arguably panning out in just the way that Leeds United manager, Daniel Farke, planned it.
The German took over the squad whilst it was in disarray in terms of the amount of players that needed to be bought or sold because of the financial implications of relegation from the Premier League to the Championship.
Indeed, the season was already a few games old and players were still heading out of Elland Road, so it’s no wonder it took the manager a few weeks to get things back on an even keel.
The odd bad result notwithstanding, Leeds have been one of the most consistent teams in the English second-tier during 2023/24 and, at the time of writing, are at the top of the pile, albeit long-time leaders, Leicester City, are on the same points but have a game in hand.
Leeds ace Charlie Cresswell remains frustrated at lack of playing time
Ipswich are only a point behind so the race for automatic promotion is likely to be one that goes right to the wire.
Charlie Cresswell can only dream about being involved for the all whites at this point of the campaign.
The young centre-back has barely featured for Leeds this year, and journalist Beren Cross believes that Cresswell has become incredibly frustrated by the situation.
“It’s been a really frustrating year for Charlie. Everybody rates him, everybody knows he’s a really good centre-back and given what he did at Millwall last season, as a mainstay in a team that got to within a kick of the play-offs, there would have been no qualms at all about him starting regularly for Leeds,” he said to NewsAtDen.
“It’s just unfortunate for him that he’s the fourth-choice centre-back in the best defence in the league. So whether it was Rodon and Struijk in the first half of the season or Rodon and Ampadu in the second half of the season, they’ve just been rock solid. And there’s been absolutely no reason, unfortunately for Charlie, for Daniel Farke to change it.
“Rodon is arguably the best centre-back in the league. He plays on the right side of the defence which is where Charlie would play.
“It’s just been really frustrating for him. We’ve seen so little of him that it’s impossible to draw any conclusions. He played a little bit in the start of the season and had a few games in August. But since then he hasn’t had a kick, whether for the under-21s or the first-team, so it’s very frustrating. We’ll have to see what happens in the summer.”
Whether or not Leeds manage to go up automatically or via the play-offs, it isn’t clear what the future holds for Cresswell.
According to WhoScored, he’s only played 346 minutes throughout the entirety of this season and therefore is highly unlikely to be considered by Farke for a starting spot.
To that end, a move away from the club would appear to be the most likely solution for all concerned, and at just 21 years of age, Cresswell can resurrect his career elsewhere.