Eunan O'Kane's time at Leeds looks to be coming to a close with Marcelo Bielsa admitting that he will favour youth over experience.
O'Kane was made captain of the club last February by then manager Paul Heckingbottom, but the 28-year-old has been deemed surplus to requirements by Bielsa, who hasn't played the midfielder in preseason or assigned him a squad number for the current campaign.
Bielsa has explained his decision to omit some players from his plans including O'Kane, arguing that it unfair to keep a player in the squad if he doesn't have a realistic chance of playing:
When a professional player has a history as a football player, for example [Vurnon] Anita, [Eunan] O'Kane and [Caleb] Ekuban have history, one way to respect them is to keep them inside the team if they have the possibility to play in another position. If we have one position and three players it's very difficult that the third player in the position gets time to play. I saw every game and every minute that they played last year and I also listened to the opinion of the club.
If you haven't trained a player it's a deficit to make a decision. We then built a group where we have two players for each position and if we had acted in another way it would have been counterproductive.
Bielsa proffered 18-year-old Jamie Shackleton as an example of a player he can develop, as opposed to Stuart Dallas and Luke Ayling who are further along in their careers and again stipulated that it would be unfair to keep a player at the club if he doesn't have the possibility of getting ample playing time.
O'Kane joined Leeds in 2016, and has made 58 appearances for the club.
