'Madness' - Paul Merson savages Leeds and Bielsa, claims Whites must change tactics

Assistant Editor AUTHORITY Senior editor responsible for daily news flow, sub-hub management, and maintaining editorial standards across the site network. FOCUS Editorial oversight, newsroom workflow, and verified reporting. THE BRIEF Former Leeds United correspondent Mark has risen through the ranks at Breaking Media Limited to manage the network’s daily output. He works between the reporters and the experts to ensure the data and the news are applied correctly to every story.

Published on:

26 Dec 2020, 7:00 am

Paul Merson has labelled Leeds United and Marcelo Bielsa's style of play as "madness" while claiming teams have caught on to the Whites.

The Sky Sports pundit appears to change his mind on Leeds depending on their result of each round of football and has gone back to disagreeing with El Loco.

Leeds' only goal in the Premier League is to survive, and they are currently achieving that with a significant gap to the bottom three.

Writing in his Daily Star column, Merson has claimed that the Whites can not continue to play the way they do if they want to succeed at the highest level.

"Playing the Marcelo Bielsa way is madness," he said.

"They play the same way whatever the score is. That can’t be right. I love watching them. But people are telling me their manager is the best in the world. Why?

"The best managers win things. I played football to win stuff. Not to be every neutral’s favourite team to watch. People only like watching you until you start winning. They soon go off you when you lift a few trophies. Leeds can’t keep on playing like this. It frustrates me."

It is the same with every pundit.

Let's cast our minds back a couple of weeks, Merson claimed that Leeds are the best thing since sliced bread and that they were going to thrash anyone sooner rather than later.

They did that by smashing five past Newcastle, and every pundit was mesmerised by both the Whites and Bielsa.

You can't please everyone, and Leeds are finding that out the hard way in the Premier League with every game that passes.

To put this into perspective though, only Sheffield United last season have more points from a team promoted to the Premier League from the Championship at this time of the season.

That isn't bad going, and six points from Burnley and West Brom this week will send Leeds even closer to survival already - we will take that.

In other Leeds United news, Robbie Savage shares verdict on Whites in Premier League

Be sure to follow MOT Leeds News on Facebook for 24/7 updates on the Whites and more exclusive content with Paul Robinson.

Leeds United

Paul Merson