West Bromwich Albion 4-1 Leeds United: Like There's No Tomorrow
Bielsa doesn't bring happiness. Bielsa brings principles and duty, and faith that the effort of adhering to them will result in happiness in the end, and the understanding that it probably won't.
This day was always coming, from the moment Marcelo Bielsa took over at Leeds United, perhaps from the moment he was first linked. Here came a coach who would make us walk the tightrope of glory above the fire pit of disaster, and a season spent hopping, hot-footed, from one to the other.
We've been lucky and lulled by our first months of romance with Bielsa, and one heavy defeat after seventeen league games doesn't mean the end of the affair. We had a miserable weekend with our illusions shattered, but it can be comforting to know we're not the first to go through this with him. In 1992 Newell's Old Boys, the team Bielsa made national champions the season before, began their Copa Libertadores campaign at home to San Lorenzo. They lost 6-0.
Bielsa doesn't bring happiness. Bielsa brings principles and duty, and faith that the effort of adhering to them will result in happiness in the end, and the understanding that it probably won't. There are twenty-four teams in a division, and only one can win the title; in any round of fixtures, a maximum of twelve teams can win; even if you win a game, or a trophy, you have to play again next week or next season, and risk having it taken away from you. We're trying to win as many games as we can to get promoted to the Premier League where we'll be beaten every week. The odds are firmly against winning anything in football and Bielsa's career has been an argument, that he made again in his press conference this week, in favour of losing with nobility. If you stick to the principles of your style and lose, all you lose is the three points, or the title. Lose your principles and you also lose your identity, and that's what Bielsa designs to defend.
What was left, at the end of the game at the Hawthorns, that was identifiably Marcelo Bielsa's Leeds United? The scoreline was not what we've become used to; West Bromwich Albion's goals looked like Paul Heckingbottom's legacy, not Bielsa's. The capitulation — two goals in two minutes, four in half an hour — was an infuriating reminder of old Leeds teams, although those teams often featured the same players. But there was more of Bielsa in the performance and the result than was at first apparent.
71 per cent possession and a 4-1 defeat can be read as a symptom of keeping the ball for its own sake, but there was very little of Jaap Stam's infamous Reading in what Leeds were trying to do. The numbers break down further: Leeds played 229 backward or square passes, but 241 forward; they played 106 passes in their own defensive third, but 244 into the middle third and 120 in the attacking third — three times as many as West Brom — and eighteen into the penalty area, compared to West Brom's eleven. Leeds created thirteen chances from open play compared to West Brom's ten.
Bielsa's philosophy values possession because it enables you to attack, meaning you don't have to defend. After a game the numbers he'll bring up first are not possession but chances created; he'll talk first about what was happening in the final third. Failure to get the ball forward quickly is one of the few situations that gets Bielsa off his bucket, roaring at the defenders and swinging his arm in a forward motion. United's problems at West Brom were not due to fannying about at the back.