How Leeds are pushing for more: Bielsa working non-stop, triple training sessions and new £1.5m pitch - The Athletic 21/7/21
By Phil Hay
Leeds United’s victory over Sheffield United on the first
weekend of April was the cue for Leeds’ directors to relax. Even the biggest
pessimist could see that one season in the Premier League would be followed by
a second, however hard the run-in became.
Marcelo Bielsa looked happy, or as satisfied as Bielsa ever
does. The boardroom was upbeat and ready to start activating plans for year
two. Leeds, in all probability, had been safe for some time but clearing the
40-point mark guaranteed survival. The rest of the season was a free hit, at
least in theory.
A week later, Leeds travelled to Manchester City and beat
the champions-elect with 10 men. Bielsa turned the screw in training,
intensifying his sessions, and that win was one of seven taken from the club’s
last 10 games. Leeds finished as the Premier League’s form team along with
Liverpool, with the second-highest points tally of a promoted squad since the
division was reduced to 20 sides. If anything, the impetus increased.
Maintaining momentum was a concerted aim. Bielsa refused to
countenance any drop-off and as the term wore on, the bonus structure
negotiated with the players at Elland Road changed to offer them new incentives
in the weeks when fixtures might resemble dead rubbers. The board had counted
on Leeds recording 10 league victories. In the end, they delivered 18. The
results kept coming, their defensive record hardened in the final two months
and Bielsa had no problem with anyone who was metaphorically on the beach.
The Argentinian is rarely on the beach himself and both the
closing stages of last season and Leeds’ approach to this summer are examples
of how fiercely ambitious Bielsa has made them since his appointment in 2018.
He was asked before a 3-1 win over West Bromwich Albion in May what he had
considered a realistic target in the Premier League and replied that he “did
not expect anything in particular”. In Bielsa’s parlance, that was another way
of saying he set no upper limit. Because his squad, in his three years as head
coach, have never had one. Progress leads to demands for more, a constant push
for development and investment.
Bielsa has not been home to Argentina since last season
finished and will not have time to return there now before the new season
begins. COVID-19 continues to complicate international travel but he has been
wedded to the club throughout the summer, forever on the scene. Staff at Elland
Road are not convinced that he has taken a single day off and pre-season
training has been full throttle again: double and triple sessions, evening
finishes and plenty of murderball thrown in. It was an eye-opener for Junior
Firpo, the left-back recently signed from Barcelona, and the extent of Bielsa’s
work is such that the presentations made to prospective recruits by director of
football Victor Orta specifically detail the club’s exhausting training
routine. Orta would rather new players arrive with their eyes open, for their
sake as much as Bielsa’s.
The club changed tack slightly in this pre-season by hiring
the Carnegie School of Sport at Leeds Beckett University for a round of testing
before full training began. Leeds have strong links with the university and
collaborate with a sports science PhD there. United’s performance nutritionist,
Andy Jenkinson, took up that position after becoming a PhD student at Leeds
Beckett. The £45 million facility was used to put most of Bielsa’s squad
through deep physical and mental analysis, amassing information which the
club’s medical staff can reference over the next 12 months. Leeds hope, for
example, that detailed baseline measures of joints and muscles will allow them
to gauge more accurately the risk of injury.
On Bielsa’s watch, a brutal pre-season has become one of
several summer routines. The renegotiation of his contract is another and Leeds
are still in the process of applying the finishing touches to an extension for
the next 12 months. The situation is much as it was last year: bound to reach a
successful conclusion but only when the deal is precisely as Bielsa wants it.
They can see his commitment in the hours he is spending at Thorp Arch and his
participation in things like an under-12s training session. They saw it too in
his request for more changes to their training facilities.
Leeds were committed to overhauling their Elland Road pitch
this summer, replacing all the drainage and lower layers at a cost of more than
£1.5 million. The work was a year overdue because of delays caused by COVID-19,
and the old surface had been problematic for far longer than that. The stadium
will have a full-spec hybrid surface next season and Leeds requested that their
first game of the new term be away from home to allow the pitch as much time as
possible to bed in. The work will also see the old dugouts replaced, in line
with Premier League requirements.
As preparations were made to lay the surface, Bielsa made
another suggestion. If Leeds were playing on a specific hybrid pitch at Elland
Road, would it not make sense for them to train on identical grass too? That
way the players would enjoy some continuity. The club agreed and at his
insistence, another substantial sum of money was set aside to install the same
surface at Thorp Arch. He wanted other, more aesthetic, changes to the complex
too but an enhanced training pitch was the big idea, a route to more marginal
gains.
These, for Orta and the club’s board, are the surest signs
of where Bielsa is mentally: still fixated, still banging the drum for
improvements, still glued to his office. He is said to have spent a little time
house hunting in the spring and there was no resistance to discussing a new
contract once last season finished. When a club cope as successfully with promotion
as Leeds did, they invariably find people talking about second-season syndrome
but Leeds have the advantage of a coach who cannot bear the thought of
plateauing. Ninth place last year and as driven as ever. All bets are off once
more.
