Ah, into the thick end of another transfer window at Elland Road. Are we still being linked with Ryan Kent? Are we going to sell Patrick Bamford? Do we need a number 10? We should probably talk about the man between the posts. We do look a bit light at full-back…

These are all questions that have only been momentarily answered over the past 106 years at Elland Road. Or at least it feels that way. We’ve still not signed Kent. Bamford is still taking his infinite number of shots at redemption (redemption from what exactly remains deliciously opaque). If that end is nigh, Brenden Aaronson appears an appropriate heir to the throne, damned to frustrate us for the duration of his 25-year contract. Illan Meslier continues to flap us to distraction, and why are all of our full-backs made of porcelain? At least one of them, Junior Firpo, has demonstrated that navigating the route to redemption is entirely possible. Not easy, but possible.

Okay, so we no longer actually need Ryan Kent. Wide forwards are one thing we’ve spent quite a number of years accruing, which is why it made soooo much sense to appoint Jesse “the goal’s in the middle of the pitch” Marsch. Yes, that still irks me.

For Bamford, the bell appears to have finally tolled. An exit appears to be in everyone’s best interests, from a purely footballing perspective at least. I’m sure his Premier League wages will deter Championship suitors and he’s not at a level to attract Premier League interest. This sorry dance seems set to continue, with the promise of several more futile minutes from the bench to come before the season’s denouement. A shot straight at the keeper here, too many touches there. You know the drill. I’m genuinely rooting for him, though, and hope he finds a second goalscoring wind as he did last season. We’ll always have that goal against Peterborough, it just would’ve been preferable if he’d been able to convert the easier chances with such chutzpah, which is why any second wind might come at Wrexham or somewhere other than Elland Road.

Number 10 and ‘keeper are somehow linked, both being occupied by players who appear brimming with potential yet consistently find ways to leave us befuddled. Both had ideas way above this station, so one can only presume these are chastening days for the pair. From Champions League stars in your eyes to elbows and high balls from Blackburn. These aren’t the sunlit uplands either envisaged.

Replacing someone like Pablo Hernandez is all but impossible and so it has proved. Aaronson has the pedigree and potential but lacks Pablo’s subtlety and command. He’s incapable of grabbing a game by the scruff of the neck and doesn’t possess a wand to manipulate a match as he envisions it. He runs around a lot more than Pablo, I’ll give him that.

From that January night in north London when the world took notice of Marcelo’s Bielsa Leeds United against Arsenal in the FA Cup, Meslier appeared destined for the very top. What set him apart that night, his distribution, masked a multitude of sins, but such is the lot of the modern goalkeeper. Either Daniel Farke’s system doesn’t need it or he’s simply lost it, but we’re left groping in the dark for redeeming features in his game.

When a post from the club’s social media account celebrated a ‘great save Meslier’ away at Derby, it appeared more optimistic than anything else. He forearmed a ball headed at him away; had any keeper in the Football League let that in they would have been lambasted. Hell, if your overweight, hungover mate let that in on a Sunday morning you’d say some somewhat unpleasant things to him. But that’s where we find ourselves, clutching at the straws of ‘potential’ and celebrating the deeply ordinary.

After more than 200 appearances, have we seen enough? Limp efforts against Portsmouth, Preston, Sunderland and Hull have cost valuable points this season alone. The debate around Meslier is well into its third season. Of course, we all make mistakes. He without sin cast the first stone and all that. But the punishment of perseverance, at this rate, could be another botched promotion and even tighter purse strings next season, making it even harder to escape this division as we gradually sink to become another Blackburn, Stoke, Hull. This doesn’t feel like a time to be overly sentimental, it feels like a time to be clinical (or the antithesis of Patrick Bamford, for those wishing to be mean).

We could be those insufferable pricks who are ten points clear and waltzing towards promotion. Make absolutely no mistake, I want us to be those insufferable pricks who are ten points clear and waltzing towards promotion.

The Championship is nothing more than a Premier League roulette wheel, so to what extent are 49ers Enterprises willing to bet big to secure the big prize? A nagging doubt will also persist around these players should promotion be achieved. If they’re not quite cutting it in the Championship, how will Bamford, Aaronson, and Meslier cope in the top flight? Bamford has at least acquitted himself well there in the past. The same can’t be said for lightweight Brenden or stand-behind-your-line Illan. Remember all that? This really has been going on a while.

The next five months will be a purgatory of sorts, the emotion of which will largely be defined by the January window. A new number 1 and 10 would be afforded breathing space to settle in, at least by supporters. To continue with the incumbents would be to continue to tread a nervy path towards May and whatever that may hold. A farewell for Bamford now feels logical, too.

The one place where misfortune has crept in has been at full-back. Sam Byram, Jayden Bogle, Max Wöber, and Junior Firpo have all succumbed to injury at various points of the season. Okay, perhaps Byram being injured is more inevitable than unfortunate. But what of Isaac Schmidt? Is he any good? Farke preferring a barely fit Ethan Ampadu as right-back cover suggests not.

Most of us felt the same about Ilia Gruev this time last year, a player brought in from parts unknown to sporadically feature before becoming essential to the side in the second half of the season. History, after all, has a funny way of repeating itself ad nauseam at Elland Road. Ryan Kent, by the way, is currently without a club, available on a free at the time of writing. Maybe he owns some goalkeeping gloves. ⬢

(Photograph by James Heaton, via Alamy)