Lewis Bate was the clever tweet

Sometimes it feels like Andrea Radrizzani is staying up every night, glass of wine in hand, episode one of Take Us Home on the telly, thumbs hovering over his Twitter drafts, looking at those three golden words he’s so desperate to shove up the bollocks of the ‘haters’: told you so.

The dopamine hit of Being Right is the reason we all use Twitter, and boy does Radz like a right tweet. Unfortunately he’s yet to learn the importance of timing, of knowing when to pipe up and when to pipe down. He’s spent the start of this season trying to justify replying with the name of ‘Adam Forshaw’ when asked where Leeds’ new central midfielder was hiding. Ignoring that Leeds tried and failed to sign Conor Gallagher, if Radrizzani was really feeling the need to be a smart arse that night, the clever tweet would have read, ‘Lewis Bate’.

Sticking up for Forshaw was admirable. In the new issue of The Square Ball, Dave Guile has written lamenting the (at best) tiresome jokes about the end of Forshaw’s career, his broken body, how he should be sent to a glue factory. Maybe we shouldn’t be LOLing at a bloke who has gone through ‘two years of hell’ and just wants his son to see him being a professional footballer? By the same token, Forshaw has gone through two years of hell and just wants his son to see him being a professional footballer, so maybe we also shouldn’t anoint the guy as saviour of our midfield (that doesn’t need saving, if you ask me, not that you should) until he’s through the inevitable setbacks and cruising again. Or at least playing.

Radz should know his audience by now, and there was another way of playing it when he was being challenged about buying midfielders. Leeds fans are miserable bastards, remember, but we do like shiny new toys, which was part of the complaint about not signing anyone. But they don’t come much shinier or newer than our Under-23s, currently rampaging the country. You know, the ones the club keep telling us are the reason we don’t need to make too many signings for the first team.

Lewis Bate actually is the new signing in central midfield everyone thought we needed this summer. And whisper it quietly, he looks pretty bloody good. The 5ft 6in human fringe has already played as a number four, eight, and ten for the U23s, like a one-size-fits-all transfer wish list depending on whether the crisis of the week is cover for Kalvin Phillips or replacing Mateusz Klich, Stuart Dallas and/or Rodrigo (Jamie Shackleton is not allowed to be the answer). After a performance of Papa John’s polish from Bate in the 3-2 win over Oldham on Tuesday night, BBC Radio’s Adam Pope scored the open goal Radrizzani missed, correcting himself about not picking out individuals to tweet: ‘But saying that… Bate! Wow!’

Pope’s wow was backed up by U23s boss Mark Jackson. “We spoke before the game and we said about that game management,” Jackson told the Yorkshire Evening Post. “I want him to be in charge of the tempo of our play and can he dictate the tempo of our play… when to switch it on and when to up our tempo and when to slow it down. I thought there were some really, really good signs from Lewis today in respect to managing the game.”

Bate is in a unique position among the hierarchy of the U23s. Speaking on The Square Ball podcast ahead of the new season, Angus Kinnear explained the two-year process with U23s signings. In the first year, they acclimatise to how Leeds train and play under Marcelo Bielsa, which will come as news to Danny Mills. The second year is when we expect them to be challenging for first team places, a la Joffy Gelhardt.

Bate is still at the start of his first year, but Kinnear told us, “I actually think [in] the next tier Lewis probably isn’t too far behind them. I think he will be a little bit more advanced than some of the other players we’ve got, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see him potentially featuring as well.”

Our new central midfielder really has been here all along, and this is the news everyone loves to hear from a club chairman, about a transfer fee bringing a spanking new young talent straight to the fringes of the first team. Where’s the new midfielder hiding, boss? The French have a phrase, ‘avoir l’esprit d’escalier’, ‘having the spirit of the staircase’, for not thinking of the witty comeback until you’ve gone downstairs and it’s too late. Avoir l’esprit de Lewis Bate doesn’t quite have the same ring, but the lesson checks out: the best tweets are always the ones you didn’t send. ◉