🦁 Premier League Player of the Week - Start spreading the news | OneFootball

It was another memorable weekend of action in the Premier League.

Our Player of the Week is …

Jack Harrison (Leeds United)

It’s always enjoyable when a player takes an unusual route to the top.

Most Premier League footballers are snapped up by a big club when they’re barely out of diapers and then, if they’re good enough, they forge their way through the academy system before making the first-team grade.

But Jack Harrison is not like most Premier League footballers.

The Leeds winger did spend some time in the academies of Liverpool and Manchester United as a youth, but in his mid-teens he moved to the United States to play high-school soccer in Massachusetts.

It was there that he attracted the attention of Major League Soccer and after being drafted by Chicago Fire, he was traded to New York City in 2016.

To paraphrase Frank Sinatra, if Harrison could make it there he could make it anywhere, and two years after making his professional debut and playing alongside David Villa in the Big Apple, he moved to New York’s sister club Manchester City.

A brief stint at Middlesbrough soon followed before he moved to Elland Road in the summer of 2018 for what would end up becoming a three-year loan spell.

Harrison played a key role in Leeds’ promotion to the Premier League and was one of the major players in their first season back in the top flight, so it was delight all round when he sealed a permanent transfer to the Whites last summer.

Which brings us to this weekend and a huge milestone for the 25-year-old, as he netted the first hat-trick of his senior career in Leeds’ 3-2 win at West Ham.

It’s been a difficult second season back in the Premier League for Marcelo Bielsa’s side. A combination of injuries to key players, Covid, Bielsa’s intense style of play and the demands of top flight football means the West Yorkshire side have floundered in the lower reaches of the table for the most part.

Even this weekend they were without 10 first-team players and had 15-year-old Archie Gray on the bench for the trip to the London Stadium.

But it mattered not as they produced their best performance of the season so far, spearheaded by the brilliant Harrison, who netted three goals inside the first hour.

He’s fast, skilful, intelligent and as his third goal on Sunday demonstrated, he has a lovely deft touch, too.

Harrison has the potential to develop into a top class player and Leeds will be hoping his performance at West Ham inspires them to make a brand new start of it and finish the season strongly.