Before, during, after
Now we've seen Leeds United as owned by Andrea Radrizzani both before and after Bielsa was in charge. And we've seen that Bielsa's reign was the only time Leeds United was good.
The problem with sending Jesse Marsch out of Elland Road is that he takes with him the credibility that, following promotion in 2020, should have ensured Andrea Radrizzani's ownership was written gratefully into Leeds United history. Choosing a coach to follow Marcelo Bielsa was always going to be the key test of what Radrizzani, Angus Kinnear and Victor Orta brought to Elland Road, and with the grintastic group photo they gathered for with their new man in March, they put everything on the line with him. Now he's gone, in circumstances that feel familiar.
For Jesse Marsch read Thomas Christiansen, and read a doomed repeat of the strategy Victor Orta and Andrea Radrizzani screamed their way out of in summer 2018. The idea in summer 2017 was that the board wanted a manager who would grow and improve alongside the team, developing young players who would become worth big transfer fees in the process. So they identified Thomas Christiansen for his potential and brought him to the Championship, hoping to ride the wave of his ascent. What they discovered then was that, after fifteen years in the wilderness, Leeds United was not a club that could wait for a young coach to get his act together, or Jay-Roy Grot's act together, whether that coach was Christiansen or their second attempt, Paul Heckingbottom. It took Orta, shouting his way through dinner at the end of his and Radrizzani's first season in charge, to make the owner understand that Leeds United Football Club had used all its reserves of patience long before they'd even arrived.
Leeds changed course — Bielsa — yet somehow, after seeing how well that worked, changed back. Jesse Marsch is a young coach who was identified for his potential and brought to the Premier League so he could develop young players while Leeds rode the wave of his ascent, etc etc. But an inexperienced coach with room for improvement, by definition, has flaws that need time to be worked out. And the Premier League trapdoor is an even less forgiving red line than the promotion places in the Championship. The problem with this approach is that it needs a unicorn: a coach who is young with faults that can be solved with time, who is also immediately proficient enough to stay safe in the Premier League. It's not just a unicorn, it's a contradiction.
That the board went back to this version of their 2017 plan, after all that happened with Bielsa that was good, makes it hard to think they learned anything from El Loco's time at Leeds. At Bielsa's unveiling, Radrizzani talked about wanting the new manager to change the culture of the club. This wasn't just a coaching role, the owner wanted Leeds to benefit from all of Bielsa's knowledge and experience. And Leeds did. And as soon as the board had shown Bielsa the door, despite claiming they would continue his 'legacy', they went back to how they were doing things before. Radrizzani's concept of Bielsa's legacy is naming the training ground after him, attaching a brass nameplate to a door through which Bielsa would recognise nothing of what he built. Was this a rejection of Bielsa's philosophy, or just a poverty of ideas?