MOT View: Neil Harris mind games in recent interview won’t work on Leeds
Neil Harris seems to be trying to send a message out to Leeds United ahead of their clash against his Cardiff City side in a week’s time.
Leeds will make the long journey to South Wales next Sunday to play against the Bluebirds in their first match since the Championship season was called to a halt three months ago.
Marcelo Bielsa’s side have been back in training for a few weeks now and some clubs have been holding warm-up matches behind closed doors to get their players back up to speed.
Leeds haven’t done that yet but teams like West Brom, who have played against Aston Villa and Manchester United, have taken that approach ahead of the restart.
Cardiff have also done the same and they played against bitter rivals Swansea on Saturday.
After the match, as quoted by the Yorkshire Evening Post, Harris said that the Welsh derby game was “about as close as we could have got to playing Leeds”.
The former Millwall manager also went on to say that all of his players felt fatigued in the two games against Swansea, something he would have no doubt wanted Leeds to pick up on.
“There was some fatigue today (Saturday), in every player on the pitch there was some fatigue and you can just see at the end of the games the importance there is going to be in being able to bring fresh bodies on,” Harris said.
Harris is trying to get one over on Leeds.
He knows how well drilled Bielsa’s players are and also how fit they are, so this just seems like a desperate attempt to instil some complacency into the ranks at Elland Road.
But Harris needs to know that there is no such thing as complacency under Bielsa.
We understand that is a complacent view in itself but the view of one fan writing about Leeds doesn’t mean it translates into Bielsa’s squad.
They’ll all be completely grounded and will go into this match treating it like any other.
They won’t stop running for 90 minutes and they won’t give Cardiff a chance if Harris thinks he can gain a psychological advantage.
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