GET WHAT YOU DESERVE - The Square Ball 3/12/21
Bielsa before Brentford is besties with Kalvin and Bamford is back (maybe)
Written by: Moscowhite • Daniel Chapman
Marcelo Bielsa’s press conferences get earlier and earlier.
8.15am! I wonder if he’s trying to sort the morning people from the slugabeds
among the assembling press? I wonder if, these being Zoom affairs nowadays, any
dare dial in from bed with their sleeping caps on and their webcams off? We’ll
come back to the press in a minute, anyway.
First, what everybody wants to know: Pat Bamford and Luke
Ayling will not be playing (nor Robin Koch). Not playing for the Under-23s,
that is! Psyche, got you. “In principle, no,” Bielsa said about them lining up
for the Jacko Generation against Leicester U23s tonight. What about against
Brentford on Sunday, though?
“It’s likely that they’ll be available for the game on
Sunday.”
Bamford and Ayling, that is, not Robin Koch. But that’s
great news! Pascal Struijk should also be available, despite leaving the Palace
game at half-time — he’s knocked his hip but “we think he will be available.”
As to whether being ‘available’ translates to ‘starting’, for Bamford in
particular, fantasy managers will still have to give this situation some
thought:
“To be available and healthy is the first step for a player
who has been without competition for two months. Nobody, just through their
presence, guarantees their performance … they can be fit but the adaptation to
the competition is something different. Sometimes that process is accelerated
or it takes longer considering the particularities of each player. Also
sometimes the needs of the team.”
Being fit doesn’t guarantee Bamford being ready to start
Premier League games and reach his old levels, but maybe the team will need him
to start anyway — “I can’t offer you a precise conclusion.”
The other main question was about the ‘rift’ with Kalvin
Phillips, that Kalvin already dismissed in midweek. That interview was fun
because even while Kalvin tried to put on his sternest ‘I am putting these
scurrilous rumours to bed’ serious voice, he couldn’t help smiling adorably
because that’s just the way he is. “I will play any position the manager asks
me,” Phillips said. “If he wants me to play centre-back I will play
centre-back, if he wants me to play goalkeeper I’ll play goalkeeper. I respect
him so much I will never fall out with him.”
Rather than adorably smiling, Bielsa opted for his usual
staring-at-table-top tactic, but his answer about the situation was just as
good, including the very obvious but needs saying:
“It’s difficult to express yourself over things that didn’t
happen, that there’s nothing behind and that they are expressed as a reality.”
That’s the crucial part right there. Why on earth were
Phillips and Bielsa being asked about this, anyway? Because Leeds were on the
Sky game on Sunday and Jamie Redknapp pulled an invented situation out of his
backside just to fill the time before he could pick up his pay and go home. The
objective of the media, says Bielsa:
“It’s to get attention with any type of resource. The press,
not only do they inform, but they have their legitimate need that what they
tell wakes up interest, and in that process, on occasion, it happens that they
invent realities to bring attention.”
Sky are a subscription channel, and newspapers need eyeballs
on their adverts, so they need to attract attention to themselves so people
will buy subscriptions and look at their adverts, and they need to do it
anyway, anyhow, even if that means making stuff up. And now here we are. (And
don’t forget that if you want to subscribe to a blog with a very good clean
website that isn’t covered in adverts and clickbait a TSB+ subscription gets
you all that, a digital magazine and some very great ad-free podcasts too,
thanks very much in advance for subscribing.)
England isn’t as bad for “sensationalism” in the press as
some other countries, says Bielsa, and the reason for that makes this
particular story even more ridiculous. The Premier League is so exciting and great,
he says, why would you need to make up stories to create fake sensations when
the real thing will enthral?
“I think in England from my point of view, it’s less than
elsewhere, normally that’s because the material they work with is precious.
Because very few leagues have so much to say about them as something as
precious as the Premier League.”
Even when that Premier League has Brentford in it. “Not one
of the most prestigious clubs in the league,” said Bielsa, and I expect that’ll
be getting wrenched out of context on a few clickbait websites down… down west?
Up west? Wherever Brentford is. Anyway, he was saying this as a compliment to
their style of play so it’s fine:
“So far Brentford have shown to be a different team in the
Premier League. The most novel thing I’ve seen is the amount of elements that
they attack with. And the management they have of the ball in all the sectors
of the pitch … they attack with six players and they always want to keep the
ball. That’s not common in any league and even more so when that team is not
one of the most prestigious clubs in the league.”
Bielsa hasn’t decided yet whether Leeds will play with two
or three centre-backs for the game, so that immediately shut down a question
about Phillips and Adam Forshaw’s merits in various different positions. He
says he didn’t see Arsenal scoring while David De Gea was having his lie down
last night either, so that was the end of another question. The last answer of
note was instead something of a retread of his old Plan B lectures, when he was
asked if it’s important for players to have a coach who sticks with principles
that have worked for them before, even if they’re not working now. Choose a
style of play and stick with it, is Bielsa’s advice. The idea of tearing up your
philosophy, “this option of the Plan B,” said Bielsa, “From my point of view,
that’s caused a lot of damage to football in general.”
It doesn’t matter what your style is, stick to it:
“The way in which a team chooses to compete, it’s a decision
that has to be respected a lot, because to construct it takes a long time. To
not maintain your philosophy of play, and abandon the main themes that sustain
it, that’s easy. But what’s difficult is to construct a new philosophy to
substitute it and know that it resolves the next game.”
“You can have cautious teams that are very good, and teams
that are protagonists that are very good, that’s to say that antagonistic
processes [he means styles of play, although I quite like the idea that every
tactic is just a way of antagonising someone] are both valid. What you can’t do
is change it on a weekly basis, because to consolidate takes a long time.”
The conclusion to these thoughts is such classic Bielsa
that, forgive me Andres, I had to double-check the translation (computers are
ace) to be sure he hadn’t thrown in an extra ‘not’. Once confirmed, though, it
isn’t surprising, given who is saying it: that if you get something you do not
deserve, you are on the wrong path, even though you won:
What’s really significant is what you obtain or what you
deserve. Because if what’s deserved is not obtained, the path is the correct
one, and if what’s obtained is not deserved, the path is not the right one. And
in both cases time verifies those things — and the only thing I’m saying is
that what corresponds is to deserve what you get.
