Aston Villa v Leeds United - Why Marcelo Bielsa takes huge pride in forging Whites’ identity

It is a strength of many top managers and coaches that they have ideas and ideals they stick to irrespective of public opinion. Bielsa can be more stubborn than most.

On the field it might mean persevering with players others lack belief in which is why, even after the £27m club record signing of Rodrigo, Patrick Bamford can be expected to lead Leeds United’s forward line at Villa Park tonight.

It can also lead to more unpredictable behaviour, such as his famous Power Point-led defence of “Spygate”, an incident which left many in English football uncomfortable, but which he saw as perfectly normal. In the same season he was castigated for that, he and his players picked up a FIFA Fair Play Award for allowing tonight’s opponents, Aston Villa, to score an uncontested goal.

In April 2019, Bielsa told his players, including a reluctant and resistant Pontus Jansson, to allow Villa to equalise after Mateusz Klich opened the scoring while Villa’s Jonathan Kodjia was down injured.

His players had followed the rules, which put the responsibility on the referee to stop the game only when he sees a foul or suspects a head injury. Bielsa, though, saw something he did not like, and Albert Adomah was allowed to level the scores. The game ended 1-1.

Bielsa insisted on personally paying the club’s fine for failing to control their players in the fall-out from Klich’s goal, just as he had after Spygate.

There is much for Leeds fans to take pride in at the moment – the beauty of their football, the imagination of their coach and his tactics, the eagerness to bring young players through and how quickly their squad volunteered for wage deferrals to protect less well-paid jobs at Elland Road and Thorp Arch at the start of the coronavirus lockdown high among them. Bielsa’s sportsmanship is another.

He is rarely anything less than fair-minded with the media and judging by the warmth they express for him, opposition managers too. Last month’s derby at Sheffield United ended with typical post-match press conferences after a 1-0 result, both sides claiming they deserved to win, but Leeds did. At his next media engagement, Bielsa made clear that on reflection, Chris Wilder had a point, actually.

On Monday night, Wolverhampton Wanderers’ Raul Jimenez kicked out at Robin Koch in front of the home dugout late in the Elland Road game. It was both something of nothing and the sort of thing players get sent off for. Referee David Coote leant towards the former.

Many managers, minutes after losing a match they ought to have won, might have made something of it, to deflect attention or just vent some frustration.

“It wasn’t important, it was nothing significant. Nothing to comment on,” was Bielsa’s response.

Adomah’s Elland Road freebie was a grand gesture, but an easy one. The result did not change Leeds’s fate – United’s chances of automatic promotion had already slipped away and they were bound for a damned play-off.

But 18 months on, Bielsa stresses he would take it again, even in more taxing circumstances. When he makes a statement like that, you can usually bank on it.

The decision was Bielsa’s and he has players so infatuated by his brilliance that – with the exception of Jansson, who later left for Brentford – they try to follow his instructions to the letter, however bizarre they might sometimes seem to be. Yet, even now, he still tries to offload the credit.

“I consider it was something that had to be done,” he commented. “Apart from that it wasn’t my decision, it was the decision of the whole club which represented the whole group – the club, the players, the technical staff.”

Dredging up past controversy often serves little purpose, and Bielsa may well have left the press room baffled at why this bit of history keeps resurfacing.

But what a football club is about, what it stands for, matters. The identity Bielsa has built at Elland Road is what has made them such a breath of fresh air in this season’s Premier League.

Being able to take pride in one’s club is more important than ever at this time when supporters cannot watch them in the flesh, yet that pain is way down the list of many of their problems. Moments like that in April 2019 deserve to be celebrated and remembered.

Whether or not a side hampered by injuries to Kalvin Phillips, Diego Llorente and Liam Cooper will be able to claim a result to savour against an Aston Villa team which has started the season on the crest of a wave remains to be seen, but under Bielsa there is more to be proud of for those who can say “We are Leeds” than mere results.

Last six games: Aston Villa WWLWWW; Leeds United LDWWDL

Referee: P Tierney (Wigan)

Last time: Aston Villa 2 Leeds United 3, December 23, 2018, Championship.

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Thank you, James Mitchinson. Editor.