How patience has pointed way for Leeds United and Huddersfield Town

The Whites have been a real tease in this season’s Championship, allowing Fulham to wipe away the 11-point gap between second and third place before sprinting off again.

If Leeds look well placed for automatic promotion again, the Terriers passed the 40-point target manager Danny Cowley set them last week. They need eight more to reach 50, which in any normal second-tier season brings safety.

Leeds coach Marcelo Bielsa is a deep thinker about the game, but ask what his team has done to change things with four consecutive victories and clean sheets after two wins in 12 games, all of which they conceded in, and he is stumped.

“What can I tell you?” says the Argentinian. “Football is a discipline where maybe you have the same performance but you get a different result. That makes football unpredictable and emotional. This is why football is so attractive.”

As Bielsa’s team wobbled, so did some fans. Desperate to see their club back in the Premier League after 16 years away, and fearful of a repeat of last season’s collapse, the clamour for team changes became cacophonous.

Every Kiko Casilla blunder brought louder calls for a change of goalkeeper. An eight-match Football Association has seen to that, but not before the Spaniard helped steady the ship with three straight shut-outs.

The pressure on centre-forward Patrick Bamford remains, intensified by substitute Tyler Roberts’s two goals in Saturday’s 4-0 demolition of Hull City, but Bielsa is nothing if not loyal to his centre-forward.

“Bielsa burn-out” is also brought up, with some – including former central defender Pontus Jansson – questioning if his methods are too demanding. The hugely-respected coach is always keen to hear alternative views, but changing the way he operates is another thing altogether.

“When you change something that is not giving you a result even if it is well developed, it is like you don’t have enough patience to wait for results,” he argues. “Sometimes it is better to try to improve the model than to change it.

“Everybody talks about Plan B (his lack of one is a stick sometimes used to beat Bielsa). I don’t agree.

“There are two big plans – build play or go direct, one team that chooses to be more creative or another that tries to destroy the play of the opponent. Both are good because you will find teams who win one way or the other.

“What you cannot do is change the plan and think you are going to get results immediately because developing a plan takes a lot of time, improving it takes even more time.”

For Cowley, the pressure has been the threat of a damaging second consecutive Huddersfield relegation. He feels consecutive wins over Bristol City and Charlton had been coming.

“Working with the group every day, you get a feel when you’ve managed long enough that the group is in a much better place but we were concerned we hadn’t got as much value since the Brentford game (in mid-January) as we deserved,” he explains. “We knew the stats were with us in terms of possession and expected goals and normally when you’re on top of those statistics, over time results come as well but you’re always concerned.”

What made the 2-1 win over Bristol City significant was it was the first game Chris Willock, Emile Smith Rowe, Karlan Grant and Fraizer Campbell started together.

“When we recruited the group it was to have maybe that front four in mind at some point,” says Cowley.

Now others are stretching supporters’ patience.

The mutterings about Garry Monk’s Sheffield Wednesday future were not ended by victory over Charlton – not when they followed it by losing to Derby County.

The thought of avoiding dropping into the third tier for the first time since 1987 could tempt Middlesbrough to make the quick fix of changing manager, and something different needs to happen at freefalling Hull.

Sometimes, though, what it needs most is a little patience.