In Bielsa We Trust

In a week where we won the Fair Play award, that fair nature was on show a little too often at Charlton yesterday. The killer instinct in the final third just didn’t seem to be there. It was one of those games where I am still not sure we would have scored if we continued until I started writing this… a day later!

We weren’t outplayed, we had 72% of the possession but we just couldn’t make anything meaningful happen. We missed Pablo and the Bamford/Nketiah experiment didn’t seem to work as many thought it might.

Lee Bowyer saw his chance early in the game and switched to three at the back, whether that was straight from the Bielsa school of study or a lucky guess, it worked, and we looked out of sorts.

It is not a disaster and it won’t be a game that defines our season. We still have the best defensive record in the league with only 5 goals conceded but that three of those came from set pieces remains the problem with Bielsa conceding that in his post-match press conference. 

Ben White has had a remarkable start to his Leeds United career but he doesn’t have the height we had for set pieces last year when Jansson was ready to attack any ball that came his way. That is something that is no doubt being meticulously worked on at Thorp Arch and we will hopefully see the result on the pitch soon.

The big question for me is, do we expect too much from the team this season? Last season took many by surprise and made everybody fall back in love with the club, but that surprise element has gone this season.  I for one am missing the flair of last season, but I suppose that’s football and the opposition have had a full season to try and figure us out.

Tuesday night lights await with West Brom visiting Elland Road. Their visit in March saw one of the best performances in recent years from Leeds. A repeat of that would be more than welcome.

In Bielsa we trust.

Embed from Getty Images