2025/26 reviewed: players at the back
Let's go through Leeds United's tacklers, blockers and catchers of the season, one by one, in descending order of minutes played.
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Joe Rodon
I love to miswrangle a stat, so let's pretend the nine goals Arsenal scored against Leeds didn't happen, and bask in how that leaves Leeds with the fourth best defence in the Premier League: only Arsenal, Manchester City and Brighton conceded fewer than our 56 minus 9 equals 47. And Big Joe, with fifteen more minutes on the pitch than any other defender (sorry Pascal) was, third year running, the biggest part of the back line.
He also spent a lot of his time teetering on a precarious edge, but he's always like that. If you're looking for a stern and stressless commander in the heart of defence, don't look for Joe, because what you'll see in his face will be every emoji at once. He's a body on the line, heart in the guts, head in the clouds and world on his shoulders kind of player, who led the team in shots blocked, but was one of the few to give up a goal through a daft mistake (that pass against Liverpool, although it kicked the second half into thrilling life so it was fine).
Frame it as one mistake in one whole season of fighting against relegation and it becomes a tribute to a player who had a quiet need, this season, to reestablish himself in the top flight he tried to break before with Tottenham and Rennes. He did just that, with aplomb, and should continue to do so as long as cooler heads surround him.
Pascal Struijk
Is Pascal that cooler head? He hasn't always been, especially back in his own previous tilt at top flight life. You can still see his emotions coming through, from time to time, but even if he's still feeling it he's got much better at concealing it. He's also got much better at football than he's ever been before.
Quietly and without fuss Struijk helped Ethan Ampadu lead the team, not just through tackles, headers and interceptions, but with more passes per game than any other player, aimed with more accuracy than anyone except Ilia Gruev. A lot of them were short or simple, but in a team that waits until everyone is ready to go, Struijk was integral to the tempo. His left foot did a lot of work behind a lot of what was good.
I wonder if Struijk is one of the players who inspired Daniel Farke, at the end of the season, to talk about keeping his best players as well as bringing in more. He's got a year on his contract, he's got admirers, and he's got a lot of left-footed value. He'll turn 27 in August, entering his peak years. Those are all reasons to cash in, and it might be that after so long at Elland Road Pascal feels like a change, suiting everyone. Except, possibly, Farke, because those are all also reasons to keep Struijk and, for once, get the best years from a player after waiting patiently for their bloom.
Jayden Bogle
Sometimes he's the best attacking right-back around, a better answer to whatever question Thomas Tuchel is answering with Djed Spence at the World Cup. And when we say attacking, it's not just the way he goes Mel Sterlanding to the byline like an accelerated tank. It's the rampages dead set on the six yard box, with the ball; and the wing to penalty spot runs ending in a goal like the one against Nottingham Forest, to meet and finish a pre-arranged pass from Ilia Gruev.
Other times he has suffered a little in the late season shade of James Justin, who added a degree of assurance that Bogle has never quite mastered. It's probably just an experience thing, and this was the first season Bogle has played in the Premier League without finishing 20th. There was a slight tinge of tiredness creeping into his Bogling, too, and maybe it's good that Tuchel has left him alone this summer for a rest and reset.
He's very great. He can do more. Some of that could depend on who plays with him on the right next season, and whether they're more precise with their prompts than Brenden Aaronson. And perhaps Bogle needed this season to acquire some authority, to stamp his quality on the next one.
Gabriel Gudmundsson
What a treat. We know better than to expect much from Leeds United's left-backs: if they can make it through a season with body and soul intact that's usually all we can ask. But occasionally we get the lovely surprise of someone really good: Terry Cooper, Tony Dorigo, Mike Whitlow. And now Gabriel Gudmundsson.
I wouldn't put Gudmundsson in the Cooper or Dorigo bracket just yet, and he's in a weird hinterland of scoring highly both for player of the year and position most in need of upgrade. That's largely Sam Byram's fault, as Leeds will likely need new back-up full-backs next season and if you're buying new, why not buy better? Gudmundsson was such a bargain, anyway, that we can imagine an even better player for not much more money.
That's all the future. The here and now is, for Gudmundsson, a deserved place at the World Cup after a season when all we had to worry about was how unlucky he can be: the own goal at Fulham, the run-in with referee Thomas Bramall at Selhurst Park, the entire season without a Premier League goal or assist. The last might not be luck, and it's his big bizarre drawback: his last league assist was for Groningen in February 2021.
He's got a few assists since then, but only ever in cups: one in the Conference League and one in the Champions League for Lille, one and a goal against Norwich in the FA Cup this March. But considering how much of this season was spent marvelling when he went surging to the byline, it's fair to wonder what's going wrong for him in the last six yards of the pitch.
Karl Darlow
Darlow has been just what we've needed whenever we've needed him, last season and this season. He's both Leeds United's number one, and the winning argument for a good experienced back-up keeper that Victor Orta would never listen to while Kristoffer Klaesson was understudying Illan Meslier.
For a few months this winter Darlow was phenomenal for club and country and, at 35, seemed to be embarking on a late period to rival Nigel Martyn (for Everton). He was matching reflexes with agility, pulling off astounding saves and making sure the defence was as good as the players in front of him deserved it to be. The one against Wolves is up for Premier League save of the season because it's the easiest to read, but there were other vital stops when, even in replays, it was hard to work out just how he was keeping the ball out.
But for a few games at the end, letting them in easy at West Ham after getting his feet in all sorts of a tangle all night at Tottenham, he reverted to the player who diverted a Sheffield Wednesday shot into his own goal at the start of the season, the one who raced out to bail Joe Rodon out for Wales against North Macedonia in November and fell flat on his face.
This is the enigma inherent in Karl Darlow. He's never quite pinned down a number one spot at the top level because, if you leave him in goal too long, the brilliance tends to fade away and things get clumsy. But bring him back a few months later and he'll be in top form again, which is what puts another contract with Leeds in everyone's interests.
James Justin
Bought late in the transfer window, for not a lot of money, from a team relegated by a margin of thirteen points: he didn't only sound like a desperate last minute squad filler but he was annoying, too, when all anyone cared about was signing Harry Wilson and Facundo Buonanotte after fluffing Rodrigo Muniz and Igor Paixao already.
What we got, as the season went on, was a living testament against the idea of dickheads. Justin might be the best example I've ever seen of simply signing a nice guy and letting the football take care of itself. It's not always good, when a player messes up a cross or a pass, to see them jogging back into position with a grin on their face, laughing at their own mistake. But when you've got Joe Rodon alongside them in the backline, down on his knees pounding the ground with both fists over the tiniest thing, such levelheadedness is an absolute blessing. It was equally nice to hear James Justin playing the hype down after he scored an overhead kick: he's scored better, he said, he's scored more importantly. What was important to him was he scored.
What was most important to Leeds was Justin's versatility. At right-back he was Bogle, at left-back he was Gudmundsson, in the centre he was as good as any of the first choice three, which meant Ethan Ampadu didn't have to deputise. At times he was keeping his place because of the domino effect he could have through the team: from right centre-back he could shift forward with Bogle to create a right winging double act no left-back would welcome. Given all the different things he did and the selfless way he did them, Justin might have been the best signing of the season.
Jaka Bijol
It took a while, but eventually, there he was: six foot three inches of pure defending. Bijol was hampered at first by a hanging over suspension, then by the time it took to figure out three at the back. But once the formation stick was twisted all doubt melted away and the poster boy for Operation Big Lads soon looked like money well spent.
There's almost nothing else to say about him, which is to his credit. The sheer lack of nonsense is Molenaar-sent, the simple reassurance of a massive defender with a massive bonce making massive interventions whenever we needed them. Bijol was exactly as advertised and exactly what was required.
Lucas Perri
Of all the goalkeeping rethinks being suggested for our next season, I'm not hearing enough people asking, why don't we just not bother? Put gloves on Wilf Gnonto and play rush goalies, it'll be fine.
The risk with Lucas Perri, meanwhile, is rethinking so hard that his hair falls out again. Daniel Farke was ruling that option in, when he said one of Perri's problems this season was taking his difficulties too much to heart. He's a smart and thoughtful guy, Farke said, with the weight of his mistakes on his shoulders, who needed taking out of the spotlight for his own good. And for Leeds United's, really. It was possible to carry Illan Meslier's crises in the Championship while Leeds were averaging two goals a game. The bottom of the Premier League doesn't come with any such margin.
Which does make one wonder about the sense of signing Perri. The background reports of split opinions among United's recruiters make it sound like they almost had too many options for arguably the biggest job of summer: finding a solid and reliable forever-replacement for Meslier. And somehow they ended up with an older goalie with much less experience and the same fragile confidence.
Perri made enough good saves to look like a goalkeeper worth persisting with, someone who with more top flight games could find the rhythm to match their underlying ability. But that's exactly the situation we were in with Illan Meslier. Leeds need to forget, just for a moment, about resale value and development potential. Just find a goalkeeper who is really good already and already able to show it.
Sebastiaan Bornauw
A bit like Bijol, Bornauw did exactly what was expected of him, which was to be a bit like Bijol (or whoever) when called upon. He might be personally frustrated not to be called upon more often, and there were already rumours about him going back to Germany by January. But that's fine, really: you have to offer some grace to a back-up player if they can move their career forward elsewhere, in return for them giving you all they have when they get in the team while they're with you.
Fair's fair, and Leeds didn't lose a game that Bornauw started, including a clean sheet at Anfield and a 1-1 draw with scarlet-clad visitors from over the Pennines. You don't get much for five million quid these days but Bornauw was plenty.
Sam Byram
So I'm sentimental, so shoot me, but seeing Little Sam all grown up into Old Little Sam and playing for Leeds in the Premier League — for about ten minutes in total — meant a lot to me. I can only imagine it meant a lot to him as well, and it's why he stayed around after promotion, just to get that career-goal ticked and say, he did it. And to be, if it was needed, a good influence on what could have been an irritated bench. It's funny how, as years have gone by and Leeds have got promoted and Sam Byram has filled the role, we heard less from Leeds fans about bringing James Milner back to the club: Byram was a nice alternative option, and one happy ending from the tangle of Cellino-era storylines. Now do Lewis Cook!
Illan Meslier
Not a happy ending, and it's all a bloody shame. I still like him, anyway, and I liked what I saw from him this season even if he was in civvies most of the time: whenever he was on or near the bench, he was as switched on and into things as anyone on the pitch or in the crowd. For five games while Perri was injured he was a creaking Karl Darlow bone away from being back in the goal, which would have been interesting, and hopefully better than the two times he turned out for the Under-21s. It was a wasted season, and he's a long way from the mega-value French international he was once tipped to be. But he could conceivably play another fifteen seasons of football and sometimes a career break followed by a change of course can do wonders in any line of work. His hair has looked fantastic all season, hopefully a sign he's been keeping ready for whatever is coming next. ⭑彡
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