“I’m the same as you. I just sit back, look at him and smile.”
Luke Ayling is talking about Kalvin Phillips, with a tone of brotherly affection. Phillips is rising at such a speed that when he does what he likes to do these days, Ayling beams from ear to ear. There was a photo taken this season of Ayling grinning mid-game as Phillips stalked the midfield in front of him, protecting the ball with trademark nonchalance. The trajectory is almost funny.
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It amuses him because, when Ayling joined Leeds United five and a half years ago, the hype around Phillips was minimal. “He was a centre-mid who got forward a bit,” Ayling says. “You looked at him and thought, ‘He’ll stay at Leeds for a while and do alright but will he kick on? Maybe not.’ He’s turned into a completely different player — the same boy, the same Kalvin, but a completely different player. It’s amazing.”
The 30-year-old is similar; a distance below Phillips in terms of how his career is likely to peak but his 200th game for Leeds is on the horizon and to speak to the people who managed Ayling at Arsenal, Yeovil Town and Bristol City, he has gone beyond the limits they thought he had. On reflection, he has surprised himself. A defender who was warned more than once that he lacked the physique or the energy to play as a Premier League wing-back has the satisfaction of saying he did exactly that.
Half of Ayling’s career as a senior professional has been spent at Elland Road. He is on 198 Leeds appearances and, in the isolated periods where the club have lost impetus under Marcelo Bielsa, he has often been a crucial presence — a voice of reason who can speak positively without pulling punches.
This is one of those difficult periods: a 12-game run in the Premier League that has produced two wins, and he is fitting this interview in between the school run and parents’ evening. He and Phillips are alike in that sense; the same men as ever they were, but changed as footballers in so many respects.
“I’d been told from a young age that I was never quick enough or strong enough to be a Premier League player,” Ayling says. “That’s part of the reason why Arsenal released me. And if I’m being honest, I didn’t think I would play in the Premier League until I signed for Leeds. I never really thought about it or thought I’d get anywhere near. Or if I was in a team who got promoted, I’d not quite make it after that. For it to go like it did in my season there last season, I couldn’t believe how well things went.
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“At Arsenal, I was a centre-half. At Yeovil, I was a centre-mid and then a right-back who never really got forward. At Bristol City I was a right-sided centre-half but coming here, it brought a whole new side out of me. I was able to go forward and bring energy, which I didn’t know I could do. I feel like the same person as I was when I came here, but not the same player — no way.”
Two hundred appearances for £200,000, the price of signing Ayling from Bristol City in 2016, is a trade-off Leeds would make a hundred times over. Initially with Garry Monk but then spectacularly with Bielsa, he became the archetypal modern-day full-back who attacked as much as he defended and covered extraordinary distances on the overlap. At their best, his running stats are among the strongest in the Premier League, integral to Bielsa’s tactics. “The stats surprise me,” he says. “For someone who wasn’t big enough, strong enough or quick enough for the level, it’s really pleasing.”
Have Leeds missed that pulsating drive this season? While Ayling’s form was not at its height initially, the club have been without him for two months after minor knee surgery in September. He was hurt towards the end of a 1-1 draw with Newcastle United and, despite training in anticipation of Leeds’ next game against West Ham United, went for an operation two weeks later.
“On the morning of the (West Ham) game I was still alright,” he says. “I was going to play centre-half and after the team talk, I went upstairs for a quick shower. When I got out, I felt something go. The knee gave way and didn’t come back. Straight away I went down to the physio and said I didn’t think I could play. Then I went for an operation on the Friday.” The only upside of Ayling’s injury was a Premier League debut for Charlie Cresswell. For Bielsa, it was one in a long line of absent players.
There was a brief period where Ayling feared a second operation may be necessary, but he resumed training last Friday and is hoping to be involved against Brighton & Hove Albion this weekend. Two months of recuperation gave him the chance to think about why it is that Leeds have dipped this season. They are, as it happens, only three points worse off than they were at the same stage of last season, but the spark, the performances and the quality; none seem to be at quite the same level, or not in a complete way over 90 minutes.
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Ayling agrees that their football has “not quite clicked” or shown the same quality, but he sees other factors too. He says that when Leeds returned for pre-season in June, fresh from finishing ninth in the Premier League on the back of promotion from the Championship, “one of the first things we all said was that there ain’t no way this season would be the same as last season”.
“Teams maybe thought when we first came into the league, we’d change our style and not do what we wanted to do,” he says. “But every game we want to win. That maybe costs us sometimes but it’s what we want to do. I don’t think it’ll change.
“We started well at Liverpool and rode the wave all the way through but this season — teams knew what was coming. You’ve seen before that a team can do well and then in the second season, they’re getting relegated or flirting with relegation. I knew it would be harder.”
The absentee list that Ayling has been on is also a handicap. “Our squad’s been stretched,” he says. “We’ve had games where it’s been all young lads on the bench, sometimes a few of them in the team too — we’ve done brilliantly to get results when it’s been like that.” But beyond that, he thinks that a schedule punctured by international breaks — three so far this season — is detrimental for the players at Leeds who seemed to thrive on relentless fixtures in the Championship. The club have clear water in front of them, with 18 games before the next break in March.
“I do feel like the breaks are quite a big factor,” he says. “We get into a rhythm but then guys are away for a couple of weeks. Our style of training and how we do things, it’s completely different to any other manager. Players go away and don’t train as much or eat differently from how we eat here. Then they come back and it’s like starting again.
“Our rhythm’s pretty important for us. We’ve played, what, 12 games since August and it’s not enough. A lot of us boys are used to 50 games in the Championship, playing week in, week out. That’s what I like. It’s nice to think we’ve got four months of solid football now. You can’t pretend that any player likes to be down there (in the table) but I’d say the performances have been going in the right direction.”
The season so far is summed up well by Ayling’s goal on the opening day at Manchester United — a bullet of an equaliser from 25 yards. Leeds celebrated momentarily, but in an instant, they were 3-1 down and on the way to a 5-1 defeat. “I enjoyed that goal for all of a few minutes,” Ayling says. “I’ll probably enjoy it more when I look back at the end of my career but not when you’ve lost 5-1.”
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What is obvious to him and everyone watching Leeds is that the dip in results has not equated to a loss of faith in the process, for want of a better word. Bielsa is seeing his squad dig in for him, scrapping to ensure that the absence of regular wins has not cut them adrift in the bottom three. The first half at Tottenham on Sunday was confident and convincing, albeit followed by a ragged second in which Spurs laid the pressure on thick. There is, it seems, a dogged refusal to let three years of dramatic progress under Bielsa fizzle out tamely.
“Look, the boys here know how much he’s done for us, how he’s changed us,” Ayling says. “He’s changed our careers and our lives. We’ll fight for him every minute we’re out there and when games have been going bad, you’ve not seen us sulk or stop trying. You’ve not seen that. We’ll always fight and part of that’s because of the total respect we have for the gaffer.”
The change in Ayling’s career and life was underlined by talk in the second half of last season about the possibility of an England call-up. Around March, the right-back is understood to have been on Gareth Southgate’s radar, a provisional option who Southgate monitored without selecting. Ayling suspects the chance has gone but was flattered to be mentioned.
“I don’t know how close I was,” he says. “There are so many good right-backs at this level. I’m about five or six years too late! But to even get mentioned (by Southgate) in one of his press conferences was surreal. I got a lot of texts in my group chats about that.”
In a way, it raises a question that has been asked about Bielsa’s squad at Leeds. How far can they go? Is there an upper limit for some of these players and did they hit that ceiling by finishing ninth last season? I ask Ayling if, amid a genuine fairytale, doubts ever creep in about whether the club’s ambition might overtake him.
“I can only speak for myself, but those doubts are always there,” he says. “That’s what pushes you. It makes you want to make the weight, it makes you want to train hard and it makes you want to be in the team on a Saturday, playing well.
“If those doubts go, you’re going to sit back and think you’ve cracked it. That’s when everything catches up on you and goes past you in the end. Doubts are good. All players doubt themselves and all players want to get better. It’s always there and I want it to be there.”
(Top photo: Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)
