Bielsa before Liverpool wants everyone to be precise - The Square Ball 22/2/22

THE SIN OF THE COACH

Written by: Rob Conlon

When Marcelo Bielsa asked a reporter if he could be more precise with the first question of his pre-Liverpool press conference, he wasn’t trying to be provocative. Bielsa is often apologising for repeating the same answers, because he keeps getting asked the same questions, so when a journalist from Sky Sports opened the presser on the topic of Robin Koch’s head injury, Bielsa wanted to make sure he understood exactly what he was being asked before answering in detail.

The initial question prompted a simple answer. The question: “Robin Koch is out of the Liverpool game following the concussion protocol — how is he feeling now and what are your thoughts on the incident?” The answer: “He’s perfect,” which I think meant Koch is perfectly fine for someone currently ticking off the stages of recovery required for a return from concussion. It was the next part Bielsa wanted clearing up. “Can you be more precise in your question towards the end?”

Sky’s reporter obliged in getting to the point: “Your thoughts on the incident originally. You said he was subbed due to a cut. Is concussion now the reason he will be absent?” This prompted a long answer explaining how and why Leeds’ medical staff decided Koch was fit to continue playing after being elbowed in the head by Scott McTominay, before bringing him off without using a permitted fourth sub reserved for players suffering from concussion. Koch was examined at the time of the injury but was not showing any symptoms of concussion, only a cut to his head, and was told by Leeds’ medical staff to sit down on the pitch if he started to feel any effects as the game progressed. That’s exactly what Koch did, so Bielsa took him off, deciding not to use the concussion sub as the initial report from the medical staff suggested Koch wasn’t concussed:

“As I didn’t have it within reach, what the reason was for the change, that’s why I didn’t want to make use of the fourth sub. Because I didn’t have the certainty … Initially it was the cut, not the clash, and after it was the clash I stayed with my initial position.”

Bielsa described that position as “the absurd idea, of not wanting to abuse the rules”. He was then asked whether that means the rules should change, as Leeds’ club statement called for on Monday, to allow a temporary concussion sub to give medical staff more time to assess whether a player has developed symptoms. That can take up to 24 hours to show — “as you should know,” said Bielsa — rather than the couple of minutes medical staff are given on the pitch to make a decision. It wasn’t surprising to hear Bielsa insisting he has “no capacity to evaluate the rules. They tell me what the rules are and I abide by them.” But it was interesting for him to suggest this attitude is influenced by the reaction to Spygate: “After what happened with Derby County I made myself completely strict, by making sure I abide by all the rules.”

Reference to Derby brought Bielsa to “a lot of injustice that I’ve not mentioned”, like why Scott McTominay avoided a card for elbowing Koch in the face, but Pascal Struijk was sent off for his tackle on Harvey Elliott. Neither player intended to cause their opponent harm, so referee Paul Tierney was right not to send off McTominay, says Bielsa. But then why was Struijk red carded against Liverpool?

“One of the consequences that generates the clash that Koch received, that I never read any commentary about that case in particular, is [that it is] the intention, not the gravity of the injury, that is punished. So of course considering that detail I value McTominay didn’t receive a sending off. It was right that it was that way because he didn’t have any intention to hit Koch, and the clash with [James and] Shaw didn’t even generate a foul because he didn’t have any intentions to clash with James even if he did so. So a very important conclusion this episode leaves is that even as grave as the foul that a player can commit, if he doesn’t have the intention of committing it, he shouldn’t be severely punished — like for example Pascal was punished with the tackle against Elliott.”

Bielsa seems most annoyed by the implicit criticism of Leeds’ medical staff in their handling of Koch’s injury. He knows how hard they work, because he’s the one demanding it, and has seen how thoroughly Rob Price prepares the club for looking after the players’ welfare, whether that be with Covid, head injuries or recycling Jamal Blackman’s limbs:

“The prevention of the knocks on the heads of the players is a situation that’s very serious, very important, that can generate real dramas. But it’s also true that you shouldn’t dramatise situations that don’t deserve to be interpreted in the way this situation has been interpreted. Because if there’s something the medical staff at Leeds have done, and I as an extension of their decisions, it is to abide strictly by the rules about Covid, knocks to the head, or any other case. If there’s any club that has acted impeccably with regards to health, it’s been Leeds.”

The Koch Monologues took up the first third of Bielsa’s thirty-minute presser. Looking ahead to Wednesday’s match with Liverpool, he was asked whether Leeds’ defence must be perfect at Anfield after a journalist suggested Bielsa said on Sunday “the defending has to improve”. Again, Bielsa asked the journalist to be more accurate with his questioning. “I didn’t say the defence needed to improve,” Bielsa told them. “I said the defensive system needed to improve.” It’s not a case of telling Diego Llorente to make sure he keeps an eye on the ball at set-pieces, but a need to organise the whole team better:

“The consistency the players in the midfield offer allows us to strengthen the defensive system. The characteristics of the players who play in the midfield make that a more defensive or offensive profile. And I said all of this to explain, because we’ve conceded fifty goals. We’re the second team with the most goals conceded and I have to make accounts of this because I’m the one responsible for the team.”

It would be easier to build a defensive profile if Bielsa could select one of his three favoured defensive midfielders, Kalvin Phillips, Robin Koch or Pascal Struijk, to protect his defence. But Bielsa preempted any questions about whether that means reinforcements should have been signed in midfield, because to have all three to choose from would be a “privilege”. And there’s no need for a fourth option because the current fourth choice, Adam Forshaw, was “the best player of the team in the second half” against Scum.

If the problems sound complicated, Bielsa has an answer to make it simple:

“We need to see the reasons why we’re conceding all these goals and try to prevent the reasons why this happens from happening.”

When Bielsa is asking journalists to be more precise, it’s because he’s also asking his team, and by extension himself, to be the same. Leeds created the same number of chances as Scum at the weekend, but weren’t clinical enough at either end of the pitch to ensure the scoreline reflected that.

“The dominance [of the two teams] was alternate, the situations at goal that we created were similar. The difference between the play in both teams — you couldn’t see a massive difference. The result that the game deserved wasn’t our defeat. But I also feel uncomfortable having to say, again, that we didn’t get what we deserved to get.”

This is not a new problem for Bielsa, who spent two years in the Championship lamenting Leeds’ efficiency in front of goal. Leeds could generally afford to miss chances because they created so many and conceded so few, but occasionally Garry Monk would turn up and it didn’t matter how many more chances Leeds created than their opposition, the scoreline still ended up the wrong way round. That risk was reduced when the strength of Leeds’ squad was reflected in one of the biggest wage bills in the Championship, but it’s a braver chance to take when Leeds are estimated to have the second lowest wage bill in the Premier League and are facing some clubs that are spending almost four times as much on their players. It’s like watching opponents being driven across a bridge in a limousine, while Leeds are crossing on a tightrope, walking on their hands. We can still reach the other side, but there’s a much bigger chance for things to go wrong.

The stream on Leeds United’s YouTube channel cut out before the final question, about whether Bielsa supports the club’s stance on issuing lifetime bans to fans caught throwing objects at opposition players. He said it’s not much to do with him. “The sin of the coach is we try to intervene too much, and I’m a big part of that,” he said. “A lot of times the art of coaching is deciding what is indispensable.”

Which is why Bielsa can sometimes appear frustrated with journalists, even if it’s more likely he’s frustrated with himself for not having anything more to add to the same questions he keeps getting asked. Time and again Bielsa has intimated that, because he is employed as head coach, his job is to concentrate on coaching, leaving injuries to the medical staff and banning orders to Angus Kinnear.

It was fitting that the last thing we saw on the stream was Bielsa checking his watch as he was asked, “When there’s such a quick turnaround between games, how concentrated do you have to be when addressing the defensive issues, do you have to be selective?” In other words, do you need to be precise?

“Yes, that’s what it’s all about,” he replied, because Marcelo Bielsa asks nothing of anyone else that he wouldn’t expect of himself. Now let the man get back to work. If you didn’t get the hint from him checking his watch, he’s not got time to waste.