Sheffield Wednesday may have solved a problem unselfishly plugged by Lee Gregory
Walking the corridors of Elland Road on Saturday, Sheffield Wednesday players may well have stumbled across what is something of a club motto at Leeds United; ‘Side before self, every time’.
It was a mantra coined by Whites legend Billy Bremner that has stuck with Leeds throughout the decades since.
On Saturday, and the Saturday before that, it may well have been used to describe the efforts of Wednesday’s own Lee Gregory.
At 35, there’s not a lot the 35-year-old front man hasn’t seen or experienced in the game.
But up until he was asked to play alongside Josh Windass in a double attacking midfield role focused in no small part on off-the-ball responsibility at Cardiff City earlier this month, he’d never played the there before.
Like Barry Bannan before him, like Akin Famewo, Gregory was asked to tweak his usual skillset for the betterment of a team still being pieced together in the early weeks of Xisco’s managerial reign.
A system switch after a turgid and passive start to life under Spaniard has begun to pay off, with only a late moment of madness in Cardiff from the otherwise impressive substitute Will Vaulks preventing back-to-back draws.
It’s a system that has left Gregory a little lost in an attacking sense. Understandably so perhaps, given the about-turn switch-up of what he is being asked to do after 431 senior appearances.
In both of his appearances there, he’s had the least possession of any Owls player – he took 27 touches in his 66 minutes at Elland Road and just 21 in his 93 at Cardiff. A positional average graph has shown him play deeper than defenders in both matches.
But he’s going about it selflessly, offering Wednesday the chance to press how Xisco wants them to.
“He wants us to be narrow and force the ball wide so that we can press the ball wide,” he said. “He asked me about the role before I played it at Cardiff, and I just said ‘Listen, as long as I’m playing I’m happy’.
“I said that I’ll listen and do the job as best as I can wherever I play.
“It was hard, it was different, but I enjoy the challenge… I’ve always been the lone striker, in a two or in the middle of a three, so yeah it is different.”
The additions of two midfielders on deadline day may well have gone some way to further enhancing Wednesday’s approach. In Jeff Hendrick and John Buckley they have experienced players with experience both in the midfield engine and further up the pitch.
Buckley has played some of the best football of his career as an advanced midfielder and was identified by Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds as a player who could fit into their highly technical pressing system such was his tactical aptitude and tireless approach to his off-the-ball role.
“I find it fun when the opposition has a player who likes to dictate play and me having to go and stop it,” Buckley said in a December 2021 interview. “I’ll play anywhere the team need me to play.”
It’s Buckley’s on-the-ball prowess that saw him catch the eye as a youngster with growing influence at Rovers in his early years. But the arrival of Tony Mowbray made him a more well-rounded player, the now 23-year-old admitted.
Buckley’s role in stifling Swansea playmaker Matt Grimes and leading the Rovers’ press on the way to a 2-1 victory in August 2021, signalled the start of a new role under Mowbray. He played in 42 of their 46 league matches in the campaign and took the club’s young player of the year award.
More recently last season, Buckley has led the way with man of the match outings in Blackburn wins at Birmingham City and against Sheffield United, winning the ball in the opposition half eight and seven times respectively. “I’ve had to focus John on pinching possession being a big strength of his,” Mowbray said at the outset of Buckley’s press-heavy new role. He likes to play with the ball and can do wonderful things with the ball, especially with those snake hips – but I think his biggest attribute is nicking the ball.
“He anticipates, stretches out a leg and pokes the ball away from the opposition. And then he joins in, he wants to stride forward with the ball.
“He is very good in a front-foot press, nicking the ball off the opposition which helps our team massively.”
It remains to be seen how Xisco seeks to use Buckley, whose energy would also be of use deeper – or if indeed Hendrick could be seen as a player able to bring his ‘something-from-nothing’ capability to a role higher up the field.
He, too, has starred in high-pressing teams through his career and a scour through his stats last season show good ball recovery stats in what was a poor Reading side. There’ll be more written on Hendrick later in the week.
What is for sure is that after Friday’s deadline day double swoop, Xisco has more options available to him, and more aptitude for the high-pressing utopia he wishes to instill at Hillsborough.