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The majority of praise from pundits this season has been directed at three Leeds United players in particular, I’d argue.
Those three players are Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Ethan Ampadu and Tarik Muharemovic.
Muharemovic’s performance caught the eye of Gary Neville in our game against Man United over the weekend. Steven Gerrard, on the other hand, was very complimentary of Calvert-Lewin after his equaliser in that game.
But an Overlap pundit was recently full of praise for a Leeds player who is certainly one of Daniel Farke’s most underrated assets. He even revealed he previously tried to sign him.
Duncan Ferguson reveals he previously tried to sign James Justin
Following his £10million move from Leicester in 2025, I think we all expected James Justin to be a solid squad player for us. Some fans at the time thought we overpaid for him. That take has aged worse than any of us could’ve imagined!
He’s developed into far more than that of a squad player. Justin has proved he can play for us as a right-wing back, left-wing back, or even as a right-sided centre-half in a back three.
And that is where the Englishman has played for the majority of his minutes for us this season, as he has started all seven of our Premier League games so far.
Speaking last week on the Overlap Daily podcast prior to our game with Man United, Duncan Ferguson praised the 28-year-old, who typically flies under the radar as one of our most underrated players among those pundits who are not associated with Leeds.
“The full-back’s a good player, James Justin,” Ferguson said.
“He was at Leicester, a good player, a very good player. When he was young, he had a couple of bad injuries.”
Duncan then admitted he tried to sign Justin back when he was Everton manager.
“I wanted him at Everton, and he got a few bad injuries. He gets up and down, good power, good pace, good player,” Ferguson said.
The Scotsman was interim manager of Everton on two occasions, in 2019 and 2022. He did not mention in which of these two spells he tried to sign the defender.
Ferguson was appointed interim manager of Everton in January of 2022. So that is likely when he tried to get a deal for Justin done, you would imagine.
James Justin has to put in a big performance against Sunderland
To this point, Justin has hardly put foot wrong in a Leeds shirt, never mind just this season.
However, against Man United over the weekend, he arguably could’ve done a better job of anticipating the danger and getting in front of Bryan Mbeumo before he could slide in and poke the ball home.
Justin cannot solely be blamed for the goal; Muharemovic certainly shouldn’t have let Youri Tielemans run past him in the first place to deliver the cross. However, it’s the first goal I can remember this season looking at Justin and thinking he could’ve done better.
His crossing in that game was also a little wayward, too, I thought.
With Joe Rodon edging closer to recovering from his hamstring injury, Justin needs to rebound emphatically with another solid performance against Sunderland this weekend if he wants to keep Rodon out of the team as the right-centre back.
