Stuart Dallas Getting Injured is a Huge Loss for Leeds
Late in the first half of Leeds United’s 4-0 loss to Manchester City on Saturday Stuart Dallas went into a tackle with Jack Grealish and ended up having to be carried off on a stretcher. On Sunday the club released a statement that ruled him out for “a lengthy period” of time.
The Northern Irish international has suffered a femoral fracture and that is an injury that typically takes four to six months to recover from according to John Hopkins Medicine. That would surely keep Dallas out for the remainder of the 2021-22 English Premier League season.
Dallas will be sorely missed by those at Elland Road as the final stretch of the season commences. This is a stretch that Leeds needs everything to really go their way so that they can survive the relegation battle that has gotten much closer than it was a few weeks ago.
Since Leeds was promoted to the Premier League from the EFL Championship after the 2019-20 Dallas has started every single one of the 72 league matches for Leeds having played the most minutes for Leeds in that time with 6,333 minutes played. He also only missed two matches in the season that Leeds won promotion from the Championship.
He may not be scoring very often this year with only one goal, but he was the second-highest scorer on Leeds last season with eight goals. But it was his play everywhere else on the field that Dallas’s absence will be noticed the most.
In an injury-plagued season for Leeds, Dallas has played wherever former manager Marcelo Bielsa or current manager Jesse Marsch asked him to. Most of the time he has played as either a central midfielder or as an outside back, but he has also played in all the other midfield positions and even has a start on the right-wing. He truly is the Swiss army knife of Leeds.
As mentioned in the club’s statement “It is impossible to put into words just how important Stuart is to Leeds United.” His injury comes at the worst time as Leeds has just four matches left and looks destined to be relegated.
This past weekend could not have gone any worse for The Whites because while they lost both Everton and Burnley won. Following the results, Burnley jumped over Leeds due to a significantly better goal difference and Everton moved to just two points behind Leeds with one more match still to be played. With Norwich officially relegated and Watford looking more and more like they will go down as well, that leaves Leeds, Burnley, and Everton to scrap it out to avoid the final relegation spot over the final month of the season.
Without Dallas Leeds are in serious danger of going down considering how difficult the run-in is. To make matters worse captain Liam Cooper picked up a knee problem before the match on Saturday and was unable to play according to a Tweet from BBC reporter Adam Pope.
In their final four matches, Leeds has to play at Arsenal, home to Chelsea, home to Brighton & Hove Albion, and end the season away at Brentford. There is a very real possibility that Leeds will not get another point from this season and could go down since Burnley and Everton have a much easier stretch of matches.
Missing Stuart Dallas and potentially Cooper will not make the job of staying up any easier for Leeds.
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