Leeds banking on Red Bull formula to give them wins as Jesse Marsch replaces Bielsa

Red Bull. It gives you wins, to adapt the slogan.

Leeds United, like Manchester United and Southampton before them, certainly hope so. By hiring Jesse Marsch, the former RB Leipzig, Salzburg and New York Red Bulls head coach as the successor to the sacked Marcelo Bielsa, they are trusting a brand.

Marsch’s three previous employers are all clubs under the global umbrella of the soft-drink manufacturer, Red Bull’s football network.

Ralph Rangnick, the interim head coach of Manchester United was, until 2020, the senior executive of its various, linked football operations, and combined the role for periods with the job of coaching Leipzig, either side of Ralph Hassenhuttl, now of Southampton, being in that job.

If Marsch, whose senior career in club management has followed the Red Bull thread for all but one season, can start his biggest adventure outside the group in the way Hassenhuttl began in English football, Leeds will feel the difficult removal of the popular Bielsa and his replacement with the American is justified.

When Hassenhuttl came to Southampton in December 2018, they were in the relegation zone; he dug them clear and has maintained their top-flight status over three full seasons since.

Leeds sit two points above the drop zone, but the two clubs immediately below them, in 17th and 18th place, Everton and Burnley, have matches in hand. So the new manager’s mission is urgent. Bielsa’s last five games yielded a single point and his team shipped 20 goals in that sequence.

Injuries to senior players have made a side of great flair for most of the Bielsa era alarmingly fragile. Marsch cannot heal the likes of Patrick Bamford, the club’s go-to centre-forward, or Kalvin Phillips, the influential England international