There is very little not to like about Sam Byram, apart from the fact that the ageing process does not seem to apply to him. He was 30 in September but hardly looks a day older than the afternoon at Farsley when, as a debutant and unheralded teenager, even his manager at Leeds United did not really know who he was.
But his body has felt the passing of the years and the timing of The Athletic’s interview with him demonstrates that. We’re speaking on a Thursday evening, before a game between Leeds and Plymouth Argyle. Two days later, Byram pulls a hamstring in the second half of that match. Leeds are at pains to stress that the injury is unrelated to the chronic problem he experienced four years ago, only a minor strain, but the little setback is indicative of Byram’s time of life.
Managing the hamstring he ruptured at Norwich City led him to invest in a pilates machine, a contraption with springs which is now part of the stack of gear Leeds’ kit staff take with them home and away. They can be seen lugging it into stadiums on matchdays. “It’s a bit of a running joke here, whenever I’m on it,” Byram says. “I’m religious with it. I’ll do it every day before training and sometimes after. I do it before matches. It helps and it makes me feel better.”
More than once, he describes himself as having a “poor injury record” and it was that which contributed to him finding himself without a contract or a club for the first time in his adult life in the summer. His availability, though, was what encouraged Leeds to go back to a player they had nurtured in their academy a decade earlier, a defender who made his debut for them in 2012. Byram realised that some in the sport would regard him as damaged goods, but his return to Elland Road on a free transfer in August gave Leeds the most competent left-back they have had in a long time.
It all started with a text from one of Daniel Farke’s coaching team, a speculative message asking what an unattached Byram was up to. That moment of contact has given him a new lease of life and a second bite at something he wanted from Leeds the first time around: promotion to the Premier League with the club who made him.
Based on his ability and technique, Byram was too good a footballer to be unintentionally out of contract at the age of 29. He built a reputation as a rangy, flowing full-back who could defend and attack with equal nous and Leeds have discovered over the past few months that neither part of his game has left him. As free transfers go, he has been a clever recruit.
But he is not inclined to sugarcoat the extent of his injury history. At Norwich, he missed almost two full years with a damaged hamstring which stubbornly refused to heal. When the recent summer transfer window came and Norwich released him, he did not expect to be flooded with enquiries. For one thing, he was not told about Norwich’s intention to let him go until the final week of last season. “They left it very late,” he says, “and not just with me. It was a strange period because I didn’t know where I stood. So yeah, that was definitely a first.”
How did it feel, the stark reality of being without a club? “Now that I’m sat here, playing at Leeds under a manager I know and playing frequently, it’s easy to say I was never worried,” he says. “But if I’m honest, thinking back to when I didn’t know what I’d be doing this year, it was a bit of a troubling time — one where you’ve got to keep the faith and hope that something crops up.
“I’ve played a few games in the Premier League and I’ve played quite a lot in the Championship. So your expectation is ‘I’ve played at those standards, I should get a club at that level’ but with the injury history I’ve got, I wasn’t daft. I knew a lot of clubs would have doubts about me. That makes you think about whether to drop down a league, to try to come back up. Who’s going to want me? But I tried hard not to think too much in that way. I concentrated most on keeping myself fit and injury-free.”
Byram celebrates his goal against Watford in September (Ben Roberts Photo/Getty Images)
Byram arranged a strength and conditioning programme with a personal trainer and a small number of clubs were open to the idea of him training with them. But unexpectedly, he received an out-of-the-blue message on his mobile from Eddie Riemer, Farke’s long-time assistant. Farke had gone into Leeds as manager at the start of July and he and his staff were putting initial plans in place at a club who had been relegated and were in a certain amount of disarray. Byram was tentatively invited to work with them, an offer with no strings attached.
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“I’m not really sure if there was any plan,” he says. “To me, it was just ‘come and train, keep fit, see how you do’. In my head, I was desperate to impress and get a contract, but I couldn’t speak for them (Farke or his staff). I don’t know what they were thinking. As the weeks progressed, there were pre-season friendlies and I was asked if I wanted to play in them and get some match minutes. Each step was ‘if I can do well, that’s another box ticked’. Prove my fitness, prove my quality, that kind of thing.”
Farke had worked with Byram at Norwich and signed him from West Ham United in 2019. Leeds were concerned about Byram’s injury record and Farke understood the extent of it, too, but he told the club that if he could survive pre-season and stay fit, they would have as good a left-back as any side in the Championship. Byram avoided missing a single session and 24 hours before the season started, he and Leeds agreed a one-year contract.
“I’m so glad I went for it,” Byram says. “I remember getting the text and my first query would probably have been that it’s a big risk to come and train without any guarantees of a contract. When you’ve got a bad track record for picking up injuries, that’s the doubt in your mind.
“I’d come off the back of two years without playing many games, so although I thought I had a good pre-season, it was always going to be a case where your bargaining chips are lower than if you come off the back of a season where you’ve played 40 games and done well. But when they said they were interested in signing me, it was just a case of ‘can we get it done in time for the first game?’.” He made his second Leeds debut a day later, in a 2-2 draw with Cardiff City.
Norwich were 27 minutes into a 1-0 defeat to Liverpool at Carrow Road, midway through February 2020, when Byram stretched for a ball and felt his hamstring go. Back in the dressing room, the pain was so bad that Norwich’s medical staff had to cut off his boot to limit his discomfort and minimise any further damage.
Byram went for scans and was told that he had ruptured the muscle. An operation to screw it in place would normally take at least six months to heal. “I was gutted by that,” he says, “but when I found out, I’d never have known it would actually be more like two years. After five or six months, I was expecting to be back playing. (But) it just didn’t feel right.”
The first bout of surgery was a failure. The screw had come loose and because of that, Byram developed a cyst in the bone. A decision was taken to repeat the operation and he was given the same message: that his recovery time would be six to nine months. “Again, I got about six or seven months down the line and I had this chronic pain. I couldn’t get to a stage where I could join back in with training,” he says.
Byram suffered his injury in February 2020 against Liverpool (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
“I’d been sent to see so many specialists. I’d have scans and they’d come back clear but there was still the pain. I was fed up of trying things and them not working, of getting my hopes up but no one being able to tell me what was wrong.”
Eventually, he found a groin and hamstring specialist in London who examined him and worked out a way to help his recovery. Byram spent a month in the capital, undergoing treatment and making more rapid, positive progress.
“It got to the point where I just didn’t want to go into the training ground,” he says. “Going to work with this guy in London, it was such a relief to be away from Norwich. Not because of anyone in particular, just because it got me away from people asking how you are, as strange as that sounds.
“People ask out of the goodness of their heart, but when you’re getting 30 people a day saying ‘oh, is it better?’ and every time you have to say ‘no’, it’s quite diminishing. The spell I had in London was huge for my mental side and my body.”
Byram finally made his comeback in a 2-0 defeat to Aston Villa. It was December 14, 2021, and 668 days had elapsed between that game and his previous appearance for Norwich. The gruelling road was a far cry from how it all started for Byram; the carefree days when nothing seemed likely to stop him.
On a scorching afternoon in the summer of 2012, Leeds — then managed by the wily Neil Warnock — contested their first pre-season friendly at non-league Farsley, a stone’s throw to the west of Elland Road. Byram, who was 19, played in that fixture, the first time he had appeared at a prominent level. He had no profile to speak of and, as he knows himself, it was not as if he had been touted as the next academy product to look out for.
In the media huddle that followed the game, Warnock was posed a question about his right-back and, in a light-hearted moment, had to ask the journalists present to remind him of Byram’s name. Byram hears that story and laughs. “I’m not surprised,” he says.
“A lot of people ask how I got my chance and I’ll never forget it. I was training with the under-21s when someone from the first team got injured. Warnock sent his goalkeeper coach over to our training area and told him ‘send me a right-back’. For whatever reason, I got sent over and did really well in that one session.
“That’s where my season started. I ended up training with them more and getting invited to pre-season. It doesn’t surprise me that (Warnock) asked you what my name was because it’s not like now where you’ve got Archie (Gray), who everyone in the club knows. It was a case of ‘send me a player’ and the rest is history.”
The history was remarkable. Byram played 53 times that season, starting 50 games. His style was pleasing on the eye and he won the club’s player of the year award at the first attempt, adapting to the Championship with extraordinary ease. “If you’d told me the year before that I was going to play 50 times, I don’t know what I’d have thought,” he says. “It wasn’t an expectation. It took a lot of people by surprise. But looking back, I did put a lot of hours and work in. I’d like to think that if the chance hadn’t come then, it would have come later. You’ve got to take it when you get it.”
That period was a little golden era for Leeds’ academy, a spell in which flow from the under-21s to the first team was impressive and impactful. To an extent, it helped that Leeds were a patch of aimless mediocrity, but the truth about Byram and the crop around him was that they were high-calibre prospects. There was Charlie Taylor, Lewis Cook, Alex Mowatt and Kalvin Phillips. At various points, they outshone more senior members of the squad. The irony with Phillips was that, for a time, he was seen as the least promising of the pack. In the end, none of them achieved more at Elland Road or earned the club a higher transfer fee.
“We were really good friends at the time and we’ve all kept in touch since,” Byram says. “When you’re in it, you don’t realise how lucky you are to be playing with four or five of the lads you grew up with. But it’s special and it doesn’t happen too often.”
Structurally, though, Leeds were a mess. The club moved from owner to owner without finding any direction and without shedding their habit of courting controversy and chaos. Byram saw mid-table finish follow mid-table finish in the Championship, with relegation more likely than promotion and coaches coming and going regularly. By the middle of the 2015-16 season, his future had come into question after United’s owner at the time, Massimo Cellino, tried to renegotiate his contract — renegotiate it by offering Byram a deal which equated to a pay cut.
Byram against Birmingham during the 2014-15 season (Dave Howarth – EMPICS)
Byram refused to re-sign and in January 2016, he was sold to West Ham for just under £4million ($5m). Cellino, never shy with words, painted him as the bad guy. “Sam Byram is the only one that maybe thinks Leeds is too small for him,” Cellino said. “He didn’t sign the new contract and he won’t sign it anymore. He’s been offered a contract a few times, he didn’t want to sign and I’m deeply offended.”
Byram is matter-of-fact about the politics and his reasons for leaving. “The three seasons I had involvement in, we finished (low down the Championship),” he says. “In my last one, I had so many managers. There was no stability at all at the club. There was no direction I could see of us competing even in the Championship.
“I’m not sure what I am allowed to say, but Massimo Cellino tried to convince me to sign a new contract on much worse terms. When West Ham and Everton at the time were interested, giving me the chance to play in the Premier League — whether you’re a Leeds fan or not, given the opportunity to live your dream, the top aspiration, most people if they’re honest would have taken the chance.
“But I’ve thought back since and with hindsight, if I’d known that the club would achieve promotion (in 2020) — to be able to play in the Premier League with Leeds — I’d like to say I’d have turned the move down. You just can’t guess what the future holds. You have to make a decision based on the facts, on what you know and what you’re given. There are some regrets that I missed out on getting Leeds promoted, but I feel like this is a second chance to achieve that.”
What he questioned in the summer, when he came back on trial, was how his reappearance might be perceived. Were the crowd sympathetic about what went on in 2016? Or would they hold Byram’s acrimonious departure against him? Cellino is not exactly held in high esteem in the city, but Leeds’ support can be ruthless with those who are seen to be disloyal. The summer saga around Willy Gnonto was an example of that.
“I did wonder,” Byram says. “When I started training here it was a secret, but I knew it wouldn’t stay that way forever. I was curious as to what the reaction would be — especially to someone coming towards their 30s with a poor injury record. I could understand why some people would question why I was here. I only hope that as the season goes on, I can do my best for them.”
On that front, Byram is winning so far. The reaction to him has been warm and welcoming, perhaps an appreciation of the fact that, in 2016, Leeds were not a club talented footballers were inclined to stick with. Nor has Byram’s personality ever been that of a mercenary.
Farke has managed him with care, particularly conscious not to push him too hard in moments in which Leeds have three matches in a week, and Byram says he has been able to train “95 per cent of the time” — at least before his injury against Plymouth. He has played well, locking down the left-back position. And towards the end of September, he got the rush he was chasing and the rush he was missing when he headed in the second goal in a 3-0 win against Watford.
“It was all happening at once,” he says. “It was my 30th birthday, the weekend we announced that our new baby was on the way and there’s me scoring in front of the crowd with my friends there. I think it’s a weekend I’ll remember for the rest of my life.”
(Top photo: Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)
