Phil Hay told Adam Forshaw is impressing behind the scenes at Leeds United
Leeds United staff are impressed by the way Adam Forshaw has trained during pre-season as he aims to return to first-team duties, according to Phil Hay.
Forshaw has missed almost all of the last two seasons for Leeds due to numerous injury issues that all started back in September 2019.
At the start of the Championship title-winning season in 2019/20, Marcelo Bielsa started Forshaw regularly and the 29-year-old played really well.
And it seems he could be on course to return to Bielsa’s first-team squad based on the way he’s trained this summer.
“I was up at Thorp Arch, I went to interview [Illan] Meslier about two weeks ago and Forshaw was there,” said Hay on the latest episode of The Phil Hay Show podcast on The Athletic website.
“I was chatting to a few people who were happy with him, he’s played in these Under-23s friendlies and seems to be ok.
“I think he’s one of these guys who now is going to need a run of games and a concerted period to say he’s over it.
“But they do feel pretty optimistic about it, in the way they have felt optimistic about him before. He’s just never quite got there.
“He’s got a lot of catching up to do, there’s no doubt. If we get to the end of September before he plays for the first time it will be two years, which is a ridiculously long period of time and I imagine very hard for him to deal with.”
Can Forshaw shine in the Premier League?
It has been a long time since we last saw Forshaw play for the Leeds first team and it could be a while yet before he’s completely back up to speed.
But his pre-season performances for the Under-23s have been encouraging and this update from Hay suggests the ex-Middlesbrough midfielder could still be in Bielsa’s plans.
We didn’t see a lot of quality from Forshaw in his first season and a half until the start of the 2019/20 campaign when he played really well.
That was in the Championship and it was also almost two years ago so he’ll not only need to recover but he’ll also have to improve his quality by leaps and bounds.
We would back Bielsa to do that but there have been players in the last year who have struggled to make the step up from the Championship to the Premier League with Mateusz Klich and Helder Costa not impressing as much as we hoped they would.
Forshaw’s immediate future remains an interesting one and we do expect to see him involved this season.
But it could be a while away and we don’t expect him to be a key player, just back-up.
In other Leeds United news, a talkSPORT pundit has shared what he’s heard about Marcelo Bielsa and Lionel Messi.