At times, during Jesse Marsch’s recent podcast appearances, he has sounded like he’s speaking from an alternate reality.

Leeds United were not 17th in the Premier League when they sacked him, games in hand meant they were 13th. They didn’t have eighteen points, like the league table showed. Using expected goals, they had 28 points. (Also, they weren’t 16th when Marcelo Bielsa was sacked, like the table showed — on points per game, Marsch says, they were lower.)

When Marsch was sacked, the team had gone seven games without a win since the World Cup break, and before the two wins that had preceded that, had lost five in a row as part of eight winless games. But Marsch says:

“When you look at both the eye test, and by the metrics, by everything that we were doing to try to put the team back on track to what we wanted to become, we were moving in the right direction.”

⬢

To read the rest of this article, you need to join TSB+ — members get access to this plus extra podcast and video episodes, all podcasts advert-free, can read every issue of our magazine online and much more. You can join or log in below.