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Junior Firpo ruled out: Early Leeds United team news v Everton
Junior Firpo will not be available to play for Leeds United when they play Everton on Saturday, Marcelo Bielsa has confirmed.
Speaking to the media on Friday [11 February] ahead of his side’s trip to Goodison Park, Bielsa revealed that £12.8million summer signing Firpo, 25, has recovered from his injury.
However, it seems that the defender is not yet match fit and will return to action next week. Kalvin Phillips, Liam Cooper and Patrick Bamford are have also been ruled out.
“He’s healthy but we’re not going to anticipate his return. He will return next week,” said Bielsa when talking about Firpo, as shown live on Leeds’ Twitter account on Friday.
He added: “Phillips, Cooper, Firpo and Bamford as in the game against Villa, won’t be considered.”
Momentum
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It’s fair to say that Leeds’ form in the Premier League is mixed.
In our first four league games of 2022, Bielsa has overseen back-to-back wins over relegation-threatened Burnley and Champions League-chasing West Ham before losing to Newcastle and then drawing at Aston Villa.
If we’d have grabbed a point at St James’ Park, you’d say we’re in good form and maybe we are. But there are still things in recent weeks that have concerned us.
Leeds were too open against Aston Villa and we had to rely on some really scrappy defending for two of our goals at Villa Park.
It’s great to see Daniel James getting among the goals but he needs to show that he can do it on a consistent basis while Rodrigo, who was tremendous at Villa, also needs to add some consistency to his game.
It’s all about momentum for Leeds right now, they need to build some in order to really start moving away from the Premier League’s bottom-three.
Of course, it’ll help when players like Kalvin Phillips are back but for now, Bielsa has to make do with what he’s got.
As for Everton, they were well beaten by Newcastle earlier this week and will no doubt want to bounce back from that in front of their own fans.
We’ve got to prevent that from happening.
In other Leeds United news, an ex-FIFA official was stunned by what a fan said about a major incident in the draw at Villa.