Post by weasel on Jun 19, 2018 9:07:28 GMT
With Bielsa now in charge the future certainly promises to be interesting. It is hard to know what to make of Bielsa with opinion generally being at complete opposites. He is hailed either as a genius who reinvented attacking football or as a madman who hasn't really achieved much. Initially his record in management was brilliant with success at a relatively small club. It could be compared to Alex Ferguson breaking the monopoly in Scotland with his Aberdeen side as his Newell side broke the River Plate / Boca Jnrs domination. However the success was for a moderately short period. International football saw him do okay with Argentina, hard really to judge as in international football they were a big fish but it is hard to win the big tournaments. With Chile he had success that was easier to define as he exceeded expectations and remains well thought of. And so back to club football and the big jobs eluded him. As such again it is hard to judge him as could he realistically have done much better with the clubs he managed. Would Guardiola have been able to do better with Bilbao for example as Guardiola's success has been at clubs that have been winning things and have all had the money to buy the very best players. Perhaps it is easier to compare Bielsa to Pochetino who has a good reputation but a lack of trophies - however is it realistic to expect Southampton or even Tottenham to be winning trophies on a regular basis.
So we come to Leeds and so far it would appear the board are really committed to making it work and are happy to give Bielsa all the staff he has requested. Now is the time to see if they can also supply the players he wants but it would make no sense to go to the lengths they have to secure Bielsa but then not to try to get the players he wants. Bielsa's track record suggests that he prefers working with younger players who are perhaps more open to ideas rather than being set in their ways. This would be in contrast to someone like Arsene Wenger who opened the eyes of established players such as Tony Adams and they bought into his philosophies. However it is usually the case that managers can find it easier to mould younger players if you are trying to create a new dynasty at a club rather than someone like Mourinho who usually targets players that are useful to him straightaway - which led to him getting rid of the likes of Lukaku and DeBruyne at Chelsea as they weren't yet ready for him. As such it is impossible to really know who he will be looking to bring in on transfers as a lot of the names we are being linked with just seem to be lay journalism rather than targets you would think he really wanted and whilst we all speculate for example of him bringing in a centreback it may be that he uses our youth centrebacks or goes down the line of moving a midfielder into defence with someone like Forshaw perhaps dropping into defence as the team is built on being able to play out from the back - whilst the idea at first would seem strange he has done this in the past and Barcelona had great success playing a midfielder, Javier Mascherano, in defence. We also don't now at this point whether we will be playing with 3 or 4 at the back and whilst I am sure Bielsa will want some of his targets in early he may also want to fully evaluate the playing staff especially the youngsters before making some signings. The youngsters may well be key as on the face of it we have now got youngsters at the club who are more comfortable playing a style of football that can link in with Bielsa's way of playing. Youngsters also tend to have more energy which will certainly be required to play the Bielsa way.
For all some 'fans' continually knock Orta it surely cannot be argued that the youth side of things looks more promising than it has for years. Where before we have had 1 or 2 young players breaking through we are perhaps now in a position similar to where we were with O'Leary when we had a batch of youngsters ready to play in the first team. This for me could be the key as they also have the experience now of english conditions and whilst the U23s is not a great standard it is perhaps a better education for them in regards to playing in England than playing in some foreign leagues where there is almost a non-contact rule.
The future for me looks very bright and I have high hopes for this team. TC was able to get them playing some great football at times and if Bielsa has better players at his disposal than TC did then there is no reason that we can't do it better and for longer. We may still come unstuck against more physical teams and it is important that we don't over react to the extent we did last season and allow Bielsa and the players the time to work out the answers.
So we come to Leeds and so far it would appear the board are really committed to making it work and are happy to give Bielsa all the staff he has requested. Now is the time to see if they can also supply the players he wants but it would make no sense to go to the lengths they have to secure Bielsa but then not to try to get the players he wants. Bielsa's track record suggests that he prefers working with younger players who are perhaps more open to ideas rather than being set in their ways. This would be in contrast to someone like Arsene Wenger who opened the eyes of established players such as Tony Adams and they bought into his philosophies. However it is usually the case that managers can find it easier to mould younger players if you are trying to create a new dynasty at a club rather than someone like Mourinho who usually targets players that are useful to him straightaway - which led to him getting rid of the likes of Lukaku and DeBruyne at Chelsea as they weren't yet ready for him. As such it is impossible to really know who he will be looking to bring in on transfers as a lot of the names we are being linked with just seem to be lay journalism rather than targets you would think he really wanted and whilst we all speculate for example of him bringing in a centreback it may be that he uses our youth centrebacks or goes down the line of moving a midfielder into defence with someone like Forshaw perhaps dropping into defence as the team is built on being able to play out from the back - whilst the idea at first would seem strange he has done this in the past and Barcelona had great success playing a midfielder, Javier Mascherano, in defence. We also don't now at this point whether we will be playing with 3 or 4 at the back and whilst I am sure Bielsa will want some of his targets in early he may also want to fully evaluate the playing staff especially the youngsters before making some signings. The youngsters may well be key as on the face of it we have now got youngsters at the club who are more comfortable playing a style of football that can link in with Bielsa's way of playing. Youngsters also tend to have more energy which will certainly be required to play the Bielsa way.
For all some 'fans' continually knock Orta it surely cannot be argued that the youth side of things looks more promising than it has for years. Where before we have had 1 or 2 young players breaking through we are perhaps now in a position similar to where we were with O'Leary when we had a batch of youngsters ready to play in the first team. This for me could be the key as they also have the experience now of english conditions and whilst the U23s is not a great standard it is perhaps a better education for them in regards to playing in England than playing in some foreign leagues where there is almost a non-contact rule.
The future for me looks very bright and I have high hopes for this team. TC was able to get them playing some great football at times and if Bielsa has better players at his disposal than TC did then there is no reason that we can't do it better and for longer. We may still come unstuck against more physical teams and it is important that we don't over react to the extent we did last season and allow Bielsa and the players the time to work out the answers.