MOT View: Costa out, four changes – Starting XI Bielsa must play v Brentford after shocking form
Marcelo Bielsa doesn’t like to make changes but these are desperate times at Leeds United.
Our form since the capitulation against Cardiff in mid-December has been that of a relegation side.
In the past 12 halves of football, Leeds have only scored in one of them. The form table for the last 10 games has them in the bottom three.
Bielsa said he had to take full responsibility in his post-match press conference and he needs to follow this through by dropping some key players.
Kiko Casilla, Patrick Bamford, Helder Costa and Gjanni Alioski need to be dropped and Illan Meslier, Jean-Kevin Augustin, Tyler Roberts and Kalvin Phillips need to come in for the game against Brentford.
The one big proviso for this is whether Roberts is fit. He left the City Ground on crutches on Saturday and we’re hoping that’s precautionary.
If not, we’d like to see Ian Poveda come in on the wing, with Pablo Hernandez staying in the middle.
Getting Phillips back is the one huge boost for Leeds and the hope is that he can stabilise things and start pointing Leeds in the right direction.
But things could be so much worse at the moment. The only two wins in the last 11 games were 5-4 against Birmingham and 3-2 against Millwall. They could easily have gone the other way.
One thing we’re fairly sure of – if Bielsa keeps on doing the same thing over and over again, the same thing is going to happen. And that doesn’t end well for Leeds.
In other Leeds United news, Hasselbaink saw something today he had ‘never seen’ from Leeds before