Marcelo Bielsa on Not Paying a High Price For a Low Player Which Might End Up Costing Leeds a High Price Or It Will Be Fine

Let’s play Blankety-Blank, and maybe you can win Andrea Radrizzani’s cheque book and pen. Can you remove the blanks in this quote from today’s press conference with Marcelo Bielsa:

“One of the things that damages the most in [BLANK] is the expectations and the hopes the fans had for [BLANK] and it feels like we’ve defrauded them. And if there’s something that hurts a lot it’s to disappoint [the fans], to not give what’s expected of us, so this produces suffering.”

…and can you work out if he’s talking about losing last weekend, or this summer’s transfer window?

He’s talking about losing, of course, but it I reckon it works for both. Without a second major signing this summer, it seems there is going to be great suffering. Not for Bielsa, who is happy with the players he has, but a lot of fans, who aren’t. It’s been almost as underwhelming as that bewildering summer when we signed Wolves’ left-back they didn’t want, a Middlesbrough reject striker, a Middlesbrough reject winger only on loan from Manchester City, sold our most promising midfielder to Italy, and got a bunch of Chelsea loanees in who didn’t play. Then our final position improved twelve places to 3rd. It’s THAT bad.

Dealing with last weekend first, Bielsa went to great detailed lengths to say it was all his fault, then said he was going to great detailed lengths to say it was all his fault to make sure everybody is clear that it was all his fault:

“I gave such a long explanation so there is no doubt that the responsibility of the defeat is in the function that I have, and I’ve argued it in a sufficient manner so you guys know that it’s true.”

You can get the full reasoning by watching the press conference on LUTV or reading Leeds Live’s transcript, but the short version is that his players have “a disposition to work with enthusiasm, and integrate the ideas that I transmit to them,” so it’s not their fault if the ideas he tells them to work enthusiastically to integrate aren’t good enough to avoid conceding five. He described three key points Leeds work on: to make the other team’s build up difficult, to be careful not to lose possession in our own half, and to maintain a defensive structure. “When the work doesn’t produce the results required, the responsibility is on the manager.” And then:

“Of course the self-esteem and the enthusiasm decreases after a defeat like the one we suffered at the weekend … it generates a hurt that is not easily cured and we don’t forget. But you can go, putting forward new emotions, that allow for this to [still] be in the memory, but [at least] that stop it being [in the] present.”

Which is where not signing any players this week comes in. “What happens, when you lose a big game 5-1, [is] it generates uncertainty around the team. It produces all these questions [about transfers] that you ask.” Questions that Bielsa answered by echoing Angus Kinnear on our podcast the other week: “It’s not probable that any more signings will be made.”

And it’s not probable that fans are going to react calmly to this! The saying goes that if you don’t go forward you go backward, or standing still is running backwards, or if we’re not spending £25m on a midfielder it must be because our potless club actually WANTS to be relegated. Something like those, anyway. Bielsa’s view on it is pretty simple.

“I’m happy, I’m comfortable with the players I can count on at the moment. It’s the same group as last year with the substitution of Firpo for Alioski. And young players who accompany the team have another year of experience. Of course if we have the option to bring another player in, we will do it, as long as that player is able to challenge the player we already have in that position.”

There’s the first strike against new signings: Bielsa likes the players we have. He admires them. He loves them. Even Helder Costa. Now, when you’re 15th in the Championship, there’s a lot of looking up to be done, a great wide vista of possible players who could come to help Leeds United. And Bielsa didn’t seem bothered about signing many of them then. So now that we’ve finished 9th in the Premier League, with smaller skies above us to pick stars from, all at a higher price, it’s even harder to pluck a player from the firmament who can do what Mateusz Klich does. And if you can find a player as good as Klich for £1.5m once, why pay £10m for a player like him now while you’ve still got the original, when you might be able to turn up another one for £1.5m later if you keep looking?

That takes us back to last summer for point two, something Bielsa mentioned. It’s hard to buy players better than we have because the club already bought good ones: “this club has invested, it’s not like this club hasn’t invested.” Last summer we got Robin Koch, Rodrigo and Diego Llorente, and due to injuries and Covid, none of them started more than fourteen of our 38 Premier League matches. They didn’t add many more minutes to that from the bench. That’s nearly £60m worth of international footballers yet to make an impact on the first team.

The club made it as known as it could that they were packing two summers of investment into one, to make the first season back in the Premier League as comfortable as possible, and they grabbed Raphinha for £17m on top because the value was too good to ignore. Perhaps the pursuit of a quiet life would have been better served by holding off on half those transfers until this window, so they could at least have something to unveil this summer, instead of leaving the fans like one of those kids with a birthday in early December who doesn’t have as much to unwrap on Christmas Day, just a Jackie Harrison (I’ve got one!), a Junior Firpo (but I already had an Alioski!) and a Kristoffer Klaesson (so you can throw that old Casilla in the bin).

Which brings us to the third and last part, sound Yorkshire thriftiness about the transfer market being inflated this summer. Joe Willock, £26m, honestly. Emil Buendia and Danny Ings at nearly £30m each? Who bought them, Aston Villa? Oh yeah, Aston Villa. But they sold their best player to do it.

“The [relatively] low prices at the moment are very high and the good players, their prices are inaccessible.”

Well, Messi was free, but I take the point.

“What’s not logical is that players [can] cost three times as much as the players we’re currently trying to incorporate.”

See above about Mateusz Klich, and repeat throughout the team: £18m Llorente, or £50m Ben White? £7m Bamford, or £34m Tammy Abraham? Want to sign a player who could take Kalvin Phillips place? It’s not possible:

“The situation is to find players who can overcome the players we already have, [and] that have a low price, but to say a low price [in this market] means a high price.”

So rather than spend big fees on players who aren’t any better than what we have, Leeds have been spreading a few small bets on Lewis Bate, Amari Miller, Sam Greenwood, Joffy Gelhardt and Sean McGurk to develop in-house. After a 9th place finish the club can count itself pretty secure in the Premier League, and take a breath to allow some of the players it has already got time to grow. If next summer Bate has overtaken Klich, we’ll be wondering what all this summer’s fuss about signing a midfielder was about. If he hasn’t, we’ll still have Klich, and still have money to buy a better player if there’s one to like at the price.

Bielsa ended by talking about young players coming through. The conference was dotted with questions about Under-23s, about Crysencio Summerville being, “one of the youngsters who has evolved the most,” while Ian Poveda has, “players that are evolving and competing with him to be part of the group,” and Niall Huggins (as an example) being a good player who might leave because there are too many players in front of him, and now that he is “up to a peak during this growth and development … they need to look for a competition higher than the U23s, otherwise their progress will be stalled.”

The most important thing for players breaking through at Leeds is to make the most of their chance when it comes. And Bielsa says it isn’t always the manager who knows when it’s time to give a player his go in the first team, but the players already there.

“There’s something that’s very representative when a young player shines for real. The first ones to perceive their possibilities is the group in the first-team. When they see that there is a player who’s good for real, it’s not that they say it. You notice when this happens, that they want that player next to them [in the team], not behind them [in the reserves]. I have lived this many times. When a young player shines, it is the players with experience who notice it immediately. Even if they don’t say it, they make you notice it.”

If you see Raphinha out for steaks with Cody Drameh, expect Luke Ayling’s days are numbered. ◉