Leeds United’s full pre-season programme has not been publicised by the club, but their first publicised friendly took place at Stoke City on Tuesday.
Initially billed as a low-key affair at the Potters’ training ground by the hosts, the clash eventually took place at bet365 Stadium.
While transfer business ramped up last week with the arrivals of Rodrigo and Robin Koch, official confirmation Marcelo Bielsa has even signed a new contract is yet to come.
Confirmation of what, if any, friendlies the Whites would play ahead of their top-flight return has also been lacking, but Michael O’Neill’s side did flag up this match a few weeks ago.
While there was no live stream of the 80-minute game, there were tweets from each club’s official accounts on Twitter from 1pm.
Here’s everything we know about the Stoke clash from the social media updates.
The Whites lost
Yes, the hosts, thrashed 5-0 at Elland Road in July, came through as 3-0 winners at the Potteries with goals from Nathan Collins, Lee Gregory and Tom Ince.
Missing men
The headline is this was far from United’s best team and it was their first, as far as we know, run-out against another club since they lifted the Championship trophy.
Illan Meslier, Adam Forshaw, Koch, Liam Cooper, Rodrigo, Ezgjan Alioski, Stuart Dallas, Kalvin Phillips and Mateusz Klich were all experienced options absent.
Kiko Casilla, Luke Ayling (captain), Oliver Casey, Leif Davis, Barry Douglas, Pascal Struijk, Helder Costa, Jamie Shackleton, Pablo Hernandez, Patrick Bamford, Robbie Gotts and Ian Poveda all played at least some minutes at Stoke.
Elia Caprile and Tyler Roberts were named in the 15-man squad, but it’s unclear whether either of them got onto the pitch.
The latter was withdrawn from the Wales squad this week as a precaution after missing several training sessions at Thorp Arch last week.
First outing for the new kit
While Stoke played a home game in their new change strip, United did give their new white number an outing with those official Premier League numbers on it too.
Ayling, captaining the side, also wore a Premier League armband for the first time in the game.
The goals
It sounds like, based on the rose-tinted perspective of Stoke’s own Twitter account, Ince had an excellent match and a lot of joy down his flank of the field.
His name came up again and again throughout the afternoon. The first strike came from a familiar avenue. Stoke scored from a penalty-box scramble which followed a corner.
Ince then crossed in the second half for Gregory to bag before firing in the third himself.
Hernandez and Bamford were mentioned in dispatches for the visitors too, though United failed to hit the target.
