The current season is in its most crucial stage and things are starting to heat up around the world as teams push for trophies but at Leeds, the temperature has also been turned up between players.
The Yorkshire club are currently pushing for a return to the Premier League and the pressure is undoubtedly high at Elland Road. Daniel Farke’s team were beaten 1-0 by Blackburn Rovers last weekend and two members of his squad were involved in a disagreement during the warm-up for the match.
The number nine position at Leeds has been highly contested this season with nobody being able to hold down the role.
Georginio Rutter spent the first half of the campaign playing there with Piroe in behind, while Patrick Bamford has since come in to take the latter’s place at the turn of the New Year.
There have been shouts from fans to start Mateo Joseph in the role and last weekend there was a disagreement between the youngster and Bamford as neither started against Blackburn.
According to Phil Hay on the latest episode of the Square Ball Podcast, the two players were involved in a heated disagreement and the journalist has claimed it took intervention from a few teammates to calm Joseph down, with The Athletic reporter potentially hinting at a bit of frustration from both at not being picked.
“We were watching this before the game. There was a really interesting thing going on between Bamford and Joseph before the game on Saturday, bearing in mind neither were in the starting line-up and both in the group of subs,” Hay said.
“In the warm-up, Leeds do a rondo, where someone is in the middle and you pass the ball about. If the guy in the middle intercepts it, whoever passes the ball swaps over with them. And there was a proper little set-two between Bamford and Joseph, a real disagreement about who was supposed to go in.
“This happens quite a lot where you see players argue with each other, but it’s usually light-hearted. Without being totally over-blown, this was more serious and more to it. It took Cooper, Kamara and Dan James to intervene and calm Joseph down.
“He was not having it. You try to look into this, and I wonder whether Joseph was unhappy about not being picked. Was Bamford a little bit niggly? The number nine position just isn’t settled at the minute.”