Leeds United head coach Marcelo Bielsa has held his pre-match press conference ahead of Saturday’s Premier League clash with Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.
Here we look at five points made by the Leeds United head coach ahead of the upcoming fixture.
On Robin Koch’s surgery…
“The surgery went well and the length of his absence depends on the evolution, but he is likely to be out around three months. Of course it’s a shame to miss him for such a long period of time, but during a season this is normal for injuries to happen to a team.”
On defensive options…
“In the game against Aston Villa, Luke Ayling played at centre back and played a very good game. In the game against Liverpool, Pascal Struijk played centre back and played a very good game. In the Championship, Kalvin Phillips also played as a centre back and adapted to this role. We’re not thinking of a possibility of bringing in another centre back to the team. Apart from that we also expect to count on Gaetano Berardi from February.”
On Patrick Bamford watching Erling Haaland…
“The initiative wasn’t from the technical staff, it was from Patrick. He asked me one time if there was a centre forward that I thought he could look at in terms of his game and Haaland has a virtue in which he is easily able to be found behind the opponents defence. For me this is a virtue that is difficult to acquire and it’s something that Patrick is progressively improving in this aspect. I thought that if he observed what Haaland does, it would be useful for him. Imitation and copying is the key element of the improvement of a player.”
On Illan Meslier’s mental strength…
“Evidently they say that one of the virtues of a goalkeeper is to have a bad memory, so to be able to forget the moments of adversity and continue playing. I don’t have a big influence over Meslier but what I do observe is the trident of Meslier, Casilla and our goalkeeper coach Marcos Abad. They have resources which I didn’t know, to prepare the body and mind of a goalkeeper. To synthesise there is nobody better placed to talk about the mental strength of Meslier than himself and Marcos.”
On the last few games…
“First of all we played against Chelsea after we played against Arsenal and Everton, which were both positive games for us. When a team does well it increases the responsibility on them. The responsibilities increase because if the team plays well, the rivals will notice this and it captures their attention. This was clearly reflected in the game against Chelsea because in this game Chelsea produced their best game in terms of physical data.”
