Leeds United head coach Marcelo Bielsa has held his pre-match press conference ahead of Wednesday's Premier League clash with Newcastle United at Elland Road.

Here we look at five points made by the Leeds United head coach ahead of the upcoming fixture.

On the passing of Gerard Houllier…

“It’s very hurtful news. He’s a man who left his mark on football and every time that someone who has contributed so much to football leaves us, it’s always a feeling of sadness.”

On the previous game against West Ham…

“The game against West Ham was our second-best game in the physical aspect, we only ran more against Aston Villa than West Ham. But to run in the game against Aston Villa was a lot easier than it was against West Ham. When you play against a team who tries to be protagonist, the field is 100 by 60 but when you play against a team who plays on the counter attack the pitch measures 50 by 40. If you see a table of how much each team has run in all the fixtures, you will have the response to your question.”

On set pieces…

“We’ve conceded four goals from set-pieces and the circumstances which highlights this problem is that it happened in two consecutive games. It happened against Ogbonna from West Ham, Zouma from Chelsea and also with Van Dijk from Liverpool. The fourth one was against Soucek from West Ham who had a significant height advantage over the player. The duels that we have lost that have caused the goals, the responsibility is taken up by the best headers we have in the team. It’s natural that when our best headers come up against the best headers in the Premier League, it is normal they can lose these duels.”

On the competitiveness of the Premier League…

“It’s very difficult to talk about the future and to predict it. The reality we’re going through at this moment, to have only picked up four points from the last 18 is a negative cycle that of course generates consequences. This negative cycle that we’re going through is similar to half of the other teams in the Premier League who have gone through a similar cycle. We know every time we play, the difficulty is very high. We try to grow so that we can pick up as many points as possible.”

On the opening 12 matches…

“If you take different moments from the 12 games we’ve played so far, you will find expressions that are very good and some that are not so good. In the Championship we had the respect of a large percentage of opponents and a superiority that was already clear. What we had to do was impose it. Our challenge in every game in the Premier league is to demonstrate that we can compete in equal conditions. That’s where we are at in this task and throughout this 12 games we’ve been superior to some big rivals and there’s been times when inferior opponents have been superior to us.”