Adam Forshaw ⭑ From A-Z since '92
This was Bielsa's point about Champions League quality. Any team, at any level, would trust Forshaw to play with them.
This is part of my (eight year long, it'll fly by) attempt to write about every Leeds United player since 1992. For more about why I'm doing this, go back to Aapo Halme. Or you can keep going below, with me and the metronome, Adam Forshaw.
Leeds United's midfield underwent a slow evolution in the 2010s. At times it was painfully slow, but we don't need to talk about Amdy Faye here. In the beginning, there was Michael Brown. Browneh begat Tommaso Bianchi, who could pass better. Bianchi begat Liam Bridcutt, who could pass better. Bridcutt begat Eunan O'Kane, who could pass better. And O'Kane begat Adam Forshaw, who Marcelo Bielsa judged good enough to play in the Champions League. Which we'd been led to expect, in the same transfer window Forshaw signed in January 2018, from Laurens De Bock.
We're skipping over a few names in that midfield storyline, like Rodolph Austin who didn't so much pass as boot the ball at his teammates and make it their problem, or Lewis Cook who arrived from Thorp Arch fully formed and brilliant. This was about the search for someone who sounds so simple: a neat and tidy player who can stop attacks, start new ones, and control the game. Leeds made finding him more difficult than it sounds. A good illustration of this slow progress is how, writing about Eunan O'Kane's debut in 2016, I called him 'mundane' and it was praise.
Forshaw's debut was a couple of years later in a 0-0 draw at Hull City, where I described Leeds as 'like drunks on a stag do trying to pass a balloon on a trampoline' in the aftermath of the 'salute badge' fiasco, while Adam Forshaw:
...wearing four, playing his first match since early December, passed like a metronome and tackled like a pickaxe through a grand piano, winning everything he went for and keeping the ball when he wanted to. Ten tackles and 84% pass success tells its own story of a player maintaining an excellent standard, whatever the conditions, and Leeds look to have a player in Forshaw that they need: a tackler, who when he gets the ball, keeps it for Leeds and does good things with it.
The difference was immediate, and the passing was immaculate - at least compared to what we'd been used to - and while it might not sound like much, the way Forshaw would turn one way then the other while looking for a pass was welcome evidence that we'd bought, for £4.5m, a footballer with a brain. My only real worry at the time was about his accent. Were we ready for such broad scouse, only a few short years after Billy Paynter?