Promotion without the emotion

Ah, Marcelo Bielsa. A name never far from the lips of Leeds fans. The miracle worker who turned water into wine. A club and fanbase revitalised by one man. You only tend to get one shot at such things. Everyone before him had failed, but he parted the Championship sea and led us to the Premier League. It was a tumultuous time, too. As we now face up to an entirely different promotion push, the ghost of Derby County can still shake your soul at night.

Things, however, are very different now. This is in no small part down to Daniel Farke. He’s calm and pragmatic, trusting his plans in a quietly confident way. He speaks enough to not be viewed as an almost mythical being, but he rarely succumbs to his own emotions on the touchline or in the media.

The other key difference is the playing squad. The side Bielsa took forth wasn’t very good. We knew it wasn’t very good because we had seen the players being not very good. 13th in the Championship was hardly a precursor to promotion. Would Barry Douglas and Patrick Bamford be enough to turn 13th into Premier League?

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