Disagreements between players are not overly uncommon in football.
And it would appear as though two members of Leeds United’s squad were involved in one during the warm-up of last weekend’s 1-0 defeat to Blackburn Rovers at Elland Road.
Daniel Farke is blessed with one of the strongest squads in the Championship this season and so competition is fierce for a place in the starting XI across multiple positions.
Leeds often have multi-million pounds worth of talent on the bench in matches, which at this level, is practically a cheat code.
£25m Dan James, £10.5m Joel Piroe, £12.8m Junior Firpo and £5m Ilia Gruev have all lined up as substitutes across various games just because of the sheer strength in depth Farke has.
Two Leeds players had a ‘real disagreement’ in warm-up before Blackburn
It would be fair to say the number nine position has been the area of the field which has had the most uncertainty this season.
Georginio Rutter spent the first half of the campaign playing there with Piroe in behind, with Patrick Bamford then coming into take the latter’s place at the turn of the New Year.
After a positive couple of months, Bamford has seen his form dip considerably in recent weeks, which has seen calls for Mateo Joseph to start grow louder and louder.
Farke has so far resisted the temptation to hand the 20-year-old his first start, something which undoubtedly will have him feeling frustrated. But for Bamford, it cannot be easy hearing calls for a youngster to take his place.
Against Blackburn Rovers last weekend, neither of them were in the starting XI and according to Phil Hay on the latest episode of the Square Ball Podcast, the two players were actually involved in a heated disagreement.
Hay claimed it actually took intervention from a few teammates to calm Joseph down, with the Athletic journalist potentially hinting at a bit of frustration from both at not being picked.
Hay shares details of Bamford and Joseph clash
He said: “We were watching this before the game. There was a really interesting thing going on between Bamford and Joseph before the game on Saturday, baring in mind neither were in the starting line-up and both in the group of subs.
“In the warm-up, Leeds do a rondo, where someone is in the middle and you pass the ball about. If the guy in the middle intercepts it, whoever passes the ball swaps over with them. And there was a proper little set-two between Bamford and Joseph, a real disagreement about who was supposed to go in.
“This happens quite a lot where you see players argue with each other, but it’s usually light-hearted. Without being totally over-blown, this was more serious and more to it. It took Cooper, Kamara and Dan James to intervene and calm Joseph down.
“He was not having it. You try to look into this, and I wonder whether Joseph was unhappy about not being picked. Was Bamford a little bit niggly? The number nine position just isn’t settled at the minute.”
