The Athletic's Phil Hay has confirmed that Patrick Bamford will once again be missing for Leeds United as they take on Leicester City this afternoon, while the striker himself has delivered the latest update on where things currently stand with his injury.

What's the story?

Writing on Twitter on Friday, Hay said: "Bielsa's pre-Leicester press conference this morning - Bamford, Ayling and Koch are all still unavailable for Sunday. Sounds like everyone else is ready."

Earlier this week, Bamford himself admitted that his recover from injury is dragging out longer than he initially expected. He said: "It's okay. It's a little bit slow. It is [getting better], day by day. It's just taking a little bit longer than I first thought.

"I think the thing that has got under my skin a little bit this time is that I anticipated I would be back in four weeks and the fact that it has taken longer than that is a little bit hard to get my head around. But now I am seeing improvements."

Fans will be worried

Given that Bamford was Leeds' top scorer last season with 17, it's no surprise that the Whites have really struggled for goals to start this Premier League campaign - they've managed just ten in their opening ten games. Former Leeds striker Noel Whelan recently voiced his concern about the kind of impact that not having Bamford in this side would have. He said: "It was one of my biggest fears. How can we live life without Patrick playing from when he’s the one player that really strings everything together up front? "He runs in behind, he runs the channels, takes centre-halves out of positions. His energy, his work right across the backline in the opposition’s defence. There’s not a player like him at the club. That was my worry, if anything did happen, which it has done now. We have seen that difficult side of the game going forward." The longer that Bamford remains out, the more difficult it becomes to see how the Whites genuinely address their goalscoring issues up front. While Rodrigo may have netted against Norwich last week, the Spaniard hasn't exactly shown himself to be a prolific forward just yet, and fans will surely be concerned as to when their star centre-forward will come back. Meanwhile, Phil Hay has dropped an exciting 49ers claim...