Leeds United aim to ease Diego Llorente in but Marcelo Bielsa admits sometimes injured players may have to be rushed

Spanish centre-back Llorente arrived in October but is yet to make his debut after being hampered by a succession of muscle injuries. It is a common problem in this season's Premier League, which has been squeezed into a smaller-than-usual timeframe after a short pre-season caused by the knock-on from last season's Covid-19 lay-off. Pablo Hernandez and Jamie Shackleton have also had muscle problems.

Leeds are at least defending better without Llorente, keeping back-to-back clean sheets since returning from an international break they went into on the back of eight goals conceded in two games.

"The defensive performance was better against Arsenal than Everton,” reflected coach Bielsa. “Against Arsenal we encountered not a lot of danger and against Everton we conceded some chances which could have resulted in goals.

"With relation to Llorente he is healthy, he is in condition to play and the ideal thing would be for him to play with the under-23s before he plays with the first team because it has been a while since he has played now but we will see. We hope we don't have a situation where we have to accelerate his progress into the team.

"When a player returns there are ways to help his recovery with an activity similar to the Premier League knowing that you can manage his game-time and that the levels are a little bit lower. This is the ideal process especially when players have repeat muscular injuries which is the case of Pablo, Shackleton and Llorente.

"(But) if the team requires him you may have to call on a player who is healthy but maybe doesn't have the ideal sporting level (of fitness). If you can do it in a more progressive manner that is better because the players' performance will progressively improve while he is playing.

“This way you can verify whether he is completely healed because he will be able to manage the efforts. Sometimes you can do it this way and sometimes you can't."

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