David Woods

Fri 7 February 2020 7:24, UK

Marcelo Bielsa keeps a scrapbook with everything that Phil Hay writes about him in. 

That was the amazing revelation the Athletic journalist dropped after an epic Leeds press conference on Thursday.

Bielsa faced five questions and spoke for just under an hour as he let the world know exactly what he thought of Eddie Nketiah and the Arsenal recall, and why Jean-Kevin Augustin isn’t playing.

Hay said two of the main takeaways from the press conference is firstly how aware Bielsa is of the public debates around the club, and secondly how he’s feeling it and how it gets to him.

Talking on the latest episode of the Phil Hay Show, the Athletic journalist said, “The initial impression of Bielsa is that he took virtually no interest in the media, beyond jousting at press conferences.”

However, nothing could be further from the truth.

“Last season I heard he was cutting out everything I was writing about him and getting it translated,” Hay added. “He’s obviously on top of everything being discussed.

“He knows in the last week, you can tell from his body language, there’s been loads of discussion about why this former PSG academy player, who cost Leipzig €13m, is seen as a potentially very good striker, couldn’t make the bench against Wigan.

“He can tell people are starting to question his lack of flexibility and tactics, his persistence with his own philosophy and I think he’s feeling a bit got at.”

Bielsa’s scrapbook

This revelation was a complete shock to us but in hindsight maybe it shouldn’t have been so surprising.

We had Bielsa down as a 100% football man who spends his entire time training, coaching and studying his opponents.

We thought he wouldn’t pay any attention to the media but it seems we were totally wrong.

The public narrative might not affect the club directly but it does have knock-on effects. The ongoing criticism of Patrick Bamford could easily affect the player’s confidence, for example.

Bielsa is so thorough that perhaps we should have thought that he’d be on top of this too – and that if he wanted to know what was being said that Phil Hay would be the man he should read.

It’s a huge commendation for Hay and his work and shows how seriously he’s thought of around Leeds.

And this should be the wake-up call that we as fans need to rally round Bielsa and stop the armchair criticism.

Bielsa has taken Leeds United so far forward it’s easy to forget where we were before he arrived. Spare a thought for that this morning.

To quote an old Joni Mitchell song, “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ’till it’s gone.”

In other Leeds United news, Bielsa gives green light for exciting eight-figure Leeds summer transfer