MOT View: Bielsa to Barcelona story removed from national paper website in new twist to tale

The Sun scared Leeds United fans with an exclusive that was published on Saturday night. 

The story claimed that Lionel Messi had urged Barcelona to make Marcelo Bielsa their new manager.

Bielsa is out of contract with Leeds next week.

However, that story has now been removed from the Sun's website and the URL makes for interesting reading.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/legal-removal/football/12223747/lionel-messi-barcelona-leeds-marcelo-bielsa-setien/

As you can see, the URL now has "legal removal" in it and links to an empty page.

We've not seen this happen to a big exclusive story very often but it seems that someone has been in touch with the Sun and made a big enough noise for them to take it down.

There are plenty of reasons why this would happen.

The story has been reported in many other publications, such as the Daily Mail. Their story was still up at the time of writing this article.

On the face of it, it's good news for Leeds. There's obviously something in the story that one of the affected parties has taken issue with.

We'd imagine that either Leeds or Barcelona would have the clout to get a story taken down if they could prove that there were details in there that were demonstrably false.

And the story has obviously put someone's nose seriously out of joint.

There could be other reasons why it was taken down – Bielsa is still under contract at Leeds after all – and speculation will continue until Bielsa confirms his new deal with Leeds. We're expecting that to happen next week.

If anything, this story could mean it gets prioritised at Leeds.

We're not overly concerned and fully expect Bielsa to confirm that he's staying at Leeds, although we'll obviously be a lot happier when it's a done deal.

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