If you have followed our coverage of Rasmus Kristensen’s early days away from Leeds United at AS Roma, you will know that things haven’t gone his way.
The defender was loaned to the Serie A side after wanting to move away from Elland Road following relegation, and an exit to Italy was organised.
His first performances, though, were far from convincing, but Gazzetta dello Sport claim he is likely to be given a new chance this weekend against Empoli, mostly because his other two competitors for the right-back role aren’t much better.
It’s explained the Leeds loanee and Rick Karsdorp are very similar, but because the latter was a player the club were willing to get rid of this summer, he is unlikely to be favoured over the new signing.
As for Zeki Celik, he is ‘much more of a defender’ compared to the other two, and despite him being given the start recently against AC Milan, he often puts up ‘disheartening performances’.
Against Salernitana and Verona, he is described as being ‘almost like an alien suddenly dropped from Mars’, meaning ‘lost’ and ‘disoriented’, to the point where it looked like ‘he didn’t even know what to do’.
That’s why Celik replaced him, but that didn’t pan out either, meaning Kristensen is now likely to be given a new shot at impressing.
This also comes after a bad performance for Denmark against Finland, and he will have to be ‘good at grasping and exploiting properly’ the chance handed to him this weekend.
Otherwise, there would be a strong argument for José Mourinho to resort to the drastic measure of using Karsdorp, a player he publicly fell out with last season.
