After only two wins in the last 10 Premier League game and with a shrinking squad, Bielsa’s team are desperate for pointsMarcelo Bielsa tends to keep his head bowed during virtual media briefings and, staring determinedly down, invariably seems to be addressing the table top in front of him.On Thursday lunchtime things changed. The Leeds manager was asked whether he feared the sack and suddenly Bielsa sat up straight, stared directly into the camera and started talking with unusual animation. Continue reading...
Granted there is an injury crisis, but it has not been a great start and the beloved manager needs to steer between extremesThe problem with any discussion of Marcelo Bielsa is the tendency immediately to speak in grand broadbrush terms; everybody already knows what they think about him. It’s the curse of our age that positions so rapidly become entrenched, even when it comes to the ostensibly trivial issue of how football should be played.Nobody can ever simply question the way Ole Gunnar Solskjær structures a midfield or his organisation of the press or ask whether the inclusion of Cristiano Ronaldo might have made those issues worse, without immediately being cast as anti-Ole or anti-Manchester United, revelling in every goal...
Just because his methods can elevate players to unanticipated heights does not mean his squad is not subject to strainThe temptation after a team, particularly a promoted team, has lost back-to-back games 4-1 is to suggest they need to go back to basics, rein in their exuberance and keep things tight. But Marcelo Bielsa will not do that. Leeds have lost three of their past four games and slipped down the table – albeit they went into the weekend with a four-point lead over the bottom five – but he has never compromised before and he is not about to start at home to Arsenal on Sunday afternoon.That is Bielsa’s greatest strength and his greatest weakness. His style is high-risk...
Picking a lineup is useful less for who makes the cut than for what the process says about the current state of the gameThe Fifa world rankings rarely fail to raise an eyebrow. Óscar Washington Tabárez is one of the world’s great coaches but are Uruguay, who scraped a 2-1 win over Chile on Thursday, really the sixth-best side in the world right now? Nobody who saw England’s notional first-choice centre-back pairing of Harry Maguire and Joe Gomez in separate action for their clubs last Sunday would feel comfortable with their ranking of fourth. Germany 14th: when do we start talking seriously about Jogi Löw? And Belgium, whom England face on Sunday, top? Even after 12 straight wins before Thursday’s...
Bielsa’s side were fun to watch and wildly entertaining but the champions were far more dominant than 4-3 scoreline suggestsOn his first day in his new prison, Marcelo Bielsa walked into the yard and, following the time-honoured precedent, approached the biggest fellow. convict he could find, and smashed him in the mouth. He may have lost the fight that ensued, but he landed sufficient blows for the wider point to be made. El Loco hasn’t changed. There will be no tempering of the approach – not that anybody should ever have thought there would be. Leeds are dangerous and demand respect.Or at least that was how it felt during Liverpool’s breathless 4-3 win at Anfield on Saturday. The spectacle, the...