Jesse Marsch contradicts Thomas Tuchel view of Leeds United's stunning win over Chelsea - YEP 21/8/22

Jesse Marsch hailed Leeds United's best performance of his tenure after a stunning 3-0 victory over Chelsea.

By Graham Smyth

The Whites took a 2-0 lead into the half-time break thanks to an Edouard Mendy error that gifted Brenden Aaronson an opener, and Rodrigo's header from Jack Harrison's free-kick.

Harrison added the third in the second half before Kalidou Koulibaly earned a late red card to cap a miserable afternoon for Thomas Tuchel and his side.

"Obviously a really good performance, the best since I've been here," said Marsch.

"What's really nice to see is not just that we get the result but I felt like we were the better team."

Marsch's view directly contradicted that of his opposite number, who insisted the result was more the fault of Chelsea than anything to do with the way Leeds played.

"He can have his opinion," said Marsch in response.

"I think that our way of playing dictated the match, almost entirely limited them, created chances, made them make mistakes.

"If you saw the first games against Everton and Tottenham, if you give these quality players time, they can pass the ball all day. And we didn't want to do that. We wanted to make them uncomfortable. We wanted to be aggressive but intelligent, and we wanted to push the game that way and I think we did."

Among several highly pleasing elements for Marsch, including a clean sheet and another goal for Rodrigo, Leeds' ability to press Chelsea into errors without taking a single yellow card stood out.

"I've been saying to them, you know last year they were learning the behaviours against the ball and how to win these duels," he said.

"Last year we were committing so many fouls and we were over aggressive and we were getting ourselves in danger with fouls and cards and now even in training, you can see that they're adapting to what the techniques are, to actually when you go in one v one situations to win balls.

"That takes a little bit of time. But in general, I think that we never get outworked or outrun. That's a moniker of what we do here. But now if we can continue to add that we don't want to get out-thought then we can be a good team. So yeah, it's coming together and we've got to keep going."

The afternoon ended with Marsch being serenaded by the South Stand as he came off the pitch celebrating.

Not everyone at Elland Road has been convinced by the American, as he himself is happy to point out, but he hopes that minds are changing.

"There's probably still a lot of doubts in me," he said.

"It's okay, it's normal. That's gonna be people that like me there's gonna be people that hate me. I just want the team to play with love and passion and belief.

"I've tried not to be pandering. I've tried to be appreciative of what the club is, I've tried to adapt to what the club is.

"Because I know the fans are so intelligent I hope they start to see a little bit more of what the tactics are and what we're trying to accomplish.

"Obviously they learned a lot in the past with different things in the way that Marcelo liked to play or different people like to play. Now they're seeing I think, I hope, they're starting to gather more information as to what the tactics look like with and without the ball.

"It's a passionate crowd and winning always helps but performances, I think, are in some ways more important."

As good a result as this was and even if it was up there with his best days as Leeds boss, Marsch is still keen to keep feet on the ground.

"This league will keep you honest every week," he said.

"So we can't feel too good about ourselves. We should feel positivity, momentum and belief but we've got to keep pushing and keep being hungry."