Tuesday night and Elland Road was the elephant in the room as Javi Gracia ploughed through the post-match press conference of a game Leeds United were already trying to forget about. Going away from home to Arsenal, the league leaders, had never generated too much hope on the terraces or in-house, so a 4-1 defeat did not give too much cause for an inquest.
The real questions, and the answers from Gracia for that matter, gave a nod to Nottingham Forest’s visit to West Yorkshire. At the time of writing, it will be 14th and 12th visiting 16th-placed Leeds in midweek for two, as pure as you’ll find, six-pointers.
Pascal Struijk had the nod over captain Liam Cooper in Saturday’s line-up which was a shock given how closely their minutes have tallied since early February and their vastly different statuses in the squad. Gracia put it down to the Dutchman’s longer time in training over the past few weeks, but it’s also fairly clear three matches in a week would have been too much of a stretch for the skipper.
“Pascal is training more time ago than Liam and, in my opinion, he was better prepared for the game today,” he said. “I know Liam played with the national team some minutes during the last week, but it's only a decision.
“Both of them are going to be important during the rest of the season. I don't have any doubt about it.”
Cooper’s likely to be a figurehead and voice Leeds want in the trenches under the Elland Road lights when Forest rock up. If his absence was a surprise, there was some shock with Luis Sinisterra’s inclusion and Rodrigo’s exclusion on Saturday.
The pair were clubbed together in a talking-down of their current condition in Thursday’s press conference, yet the Colombian was given an hour and the Brazilian had the other 30 minutes. You wouldn’t be surprised if Rodrigo was being sharpened up for the tests next week, where goals really could prove to be the difference between staying up or going down.
“I'm happy with him,” Gracia said of Sinisterra. “Very happy because he's training well, as you see today, he was able to play around 60 minutes and it's more or less the limit in this moment he can play, no more than 60 minutes.
“We are managing the minutes for Luis, the minutes for Rodri, It’s something we have to manage.”
That minute management may well mean more on Tuesday for those who missed out at Emirates Stadium: Cooper, Patrick Bamford and Rodrigo.
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