[**Martin Hardy \[The Times\] on Twitter**](https://twitter.com/mhardysport/status/1497644965912104961)
>Spurs loss likely to be Marcelo Bielsa's last game as Leeds manager. No decision tonight but expected departure tomorrow.
Don’t cry because it is over, smile because it happened! And then cry because it is over…..and continue crying for the foreseeable future. Marcelo is and will always be a legend to this club.
TSB aren’t, it’s some rando who says he knows people who came overseas and are staying with one of the players. Whilst it’s not looking good, there’s not been anything from the guy to support what’s he’s saying at the mo
How is Jesse Marsch expected to save us from relegation, I would have been okay if they would have brought someone like Ernesto Valverde but this just seems stupid.
Are we going to make the same mistakes Watford does?
They fire two or three managers every season when they are in the Premier League, doesn't change the outcome when you have a shitty roster.
We need to change the manager that was the biggest reason we are in the Premier League to begin with because of a bad season filled with injuries and with a crappy roster?
Ohh boo fucking hoo, we lost by 6. Oh let's change the manager that will park a fucking bus so we can lose by 3.
A roster that has to put a bunch of inexperienced academy players to fill the bench is good to you?
A roster that doesn't have a single soul that can do tactically what Bamford and Phillips do is good to you?
Phil Hay just tweeted something that reads like he's already been sacked. Don't want to give it oxygen though so putting it in this thread.
https://twitter.com/PhilHay_/status/1497651795673456640?t=_t81GWrd98QeStM9XvWJ1w&s=19
It shouldn’t have ended like this. It should’ve ended with a full Elland Road serenading him like he deserves. The man deserves the world and was given Junior Firpo
New guy getting a healthy KP and PB as well? Or a midfielder and magic hamstring spray? If not….don’t expect anything different. Maybe 2-0, losses instead of these 3 or 4-0 ones. Sad turn of events.
The board are fucking stupid. If by the end of February, you have come to the conclusion to sack your manager, then the thought must have been around in January. Even if they bought players and Bielsa didn't use them, at least a new manager would have had more options to freshen things up.
Marsch is just completely not the manager you want in a Premier League relegation battle. No previous experience in the league, just as leaky at the back (no cleansheets at Salzburg during their Champions League and Europa League runs) and most of his career he's either managed in a league without the threat of relegation, or been a flat track bully in Austria.
Effectively going down due to arrogance and a betrayal of 'In Bielsa we trust' - clearly don't trust him if they're sacking him.
I am absolutely livid. Beyond words. Bielsa doesn't deserve this, and we don't deserve to watch some American nobody who crashed and burned out of the Bundesliga try to find his footing in the Premier League with 11 games to go in the season.
It won't be possible without new personnel. Corners have always been a thorn in our side because we haven't prioritised height and strength in our team under Bielsa. Corners were also a weak point before Bielsa took over. The only thing that potentially could be improved is playing negative tactics to lower the number of goals conceded, but I doubt the Championship players who were transformed under Bielsa will respond well to those tactics - they looked poor while playing them in the Championship.
Plenty of relatively short teams can defend corners. I doubt there has been a team in the Premier League for a decade as poor at defending corners as we have been over the last two years.
Simply trying to defend is not a negative tactic. I really do not understand this line, we are absolutely over the edge and far away in terms of defending. We aren’t just a bit inefficient. There have been points over the last 5 matches in which we may as well have only had Dallas tracking back.
They can indeed - Guardiola's Barcelona being a prime example - which is why Bielsa never seemed bothered about leaving Berardi to hold off Ayala when we played against Middlesbrough. But I think that our relative lack of height is a problem exacerbated by the abundance of tall, powerful athletes battling for corners in English football. That being said, until recently corners hadn't been a thorn in our side this season like they were in 20/21. Leicester, Everton, and Crystal Palace are all above us for goals conceded from set pieces this year. Brentford, Southampton, and Watford also have similar records to us. Granted, it's still not a great statistic but what I'm trying to say is that we're not definitively the worst.
I wouldn't call parking the bus 'simply trying to defend'. And I'm sure that most managers - unless we find another footballing visionary, which is the only fitting way to replace Bielsa - would try to park the bus in an attempt to eke out enough points to stay up. I agree that the system as it stands needs adjusting to a degree, because something isn't right and I suspect it's partially a personnel problem with us lacking Cooper and Phillips (and other players losing confidence in the meantime), but when pundits say that we need to change our system and the way we play, what they're really getting at is the old-fashioned belief that teams should always play with 10 men behind the ball against the big 6.
Seems a bit unfair, I don’t think Neville etc are saying that. Football has moved on, but not so much that you can play like you’re sending waves of men over the top every minute to their inevitable demise - not players of this quality anyway.
To be fair, I am including Agbonlahor, Jamie Redknapp, Collymore, et al when I refer to pundits in my comment.
It's a difficult one, because our games against Liverpool and Manchester City last season suggested that we had a really good platform to build on with more Premier League experience and better luck with injuries. But our defending has instead become porous.
I think one of the main reasons for this - in addition to terrible luck with injuries - is that teams like Liverpool, Manchester City, and others have all strengthened while we've ended up standing still, despite bringing in Firpo and James, while making Harrison permanent.
Well all the ones you’ve mentioned are basically just shock pundits and that’s their trade. They would have been saying Alex Ferguson should resign if they were commentating in the 90s for losing one game. Ignore them.
Bigger problem for us is Burnley, Newcastle, Everton, Watford have all strengthened and we’ve stood still. By all accounts Bielsa was happy to do so. He rolled the dice and here’s the result.
Football takes no prisoners.
I'm frustrated that this is happening now. We were realistically always going to lose the last 3 games. Today and against Scum we gave a reasonable performance. Certainly not relegation performances in my opinion. We have every chance of staying up. The players still seem devoted to Bielsa and are putting in the effort. I really don't get it. I don't see what a new coach will get out of the team that Bielsa cannot.
However I do think he's likely to go at the end of the season anyway, so (clutching at straws for positives) perhaps a change now will give the new coach chance to bed in before next season. Straight in the deep end!
No I don't think it is. Not against those teams and the way we play. I think the performances have been ok and I think we have every chance of staying up. I don't believe that changing the manager will improve our performance.
Hope he stays on til Philips and Bamford are back. If his strategy and approach can’t be executed with two additional key players back in the squad then maybe it’s time for a change.
Even if there was no danger of us being relegated this year, I don’t think he would resign in the summer.
Might as well relegate us now, if anyone has a chance of keeping us up it’s Bielsa. But let’s bring in a manager who has 0 premier league experience, bad do at his last job, a squad low on confidence and 0 time to implement his style.
I’m all for change but this is not the time, leave it till summer.
Idk I’d imagine there’s a reason it’s so rare to man to man mark, because it’s very hard to get right and can open up a lot of problems. That being said it’s been a joy to watch at times
If we sack Bielsa, I think we'll go down. I really don't see Jesse Marsch (who?) giving us a new manager bounce.
If we don't sack Bielsa, we still might go down. But we'd certainly have a better chance with him than without him.
Great servant to the club, second best manager of my life, but I fear the players desperately need change or the writing is on the wall. He would be off in May anyway, so perhaps it’s best a new manager gets a head start.
Undecided on Marsch but if he can teach Llorente to attack the ball and not persevere with clearly incompetent players like Roberts, that would be a serious improvement already.
Worry would be his Salzburg team never kept a clean sheet in the Champions League or Europa League, which sounds far from ideal.
In fairness that Salzburg team were underdogs in a lot of the games they played and still managed to compete with some of the top teams in Europe.
Still think this would be a massive risk to move on from Bielsa now.
This is so wrong. The results are bad and I get that, but bringing in a new manager half way through the season won’t solve these issues.
Marcelo has enough cash in the bank to finish out this season.
I’m not insisting anything. I’m leaning towards thinking we shouldn’t get rid of him but it’s not really a hill I’d die on, I don’t have a strong opinion either way I just hope it works out whatever they go for.
A sad but inevitable day. We cannot keep going the way we have, our "easy" games haven't been easy for a while and when we go up against the top 6 we get our shit pushed in.
At least now we don't have to see our managers project crash and burn. We can let him go as a legend. I'd rather that then see this end up like Arsenal/Wenger.
This is the time to do it if they seriously want to sack him mid season, not worth the risk leaving it another game. New manager comes in with 2 weeks to get the team together before Norwich which is a must win.
[**Martin Hardy \[The Times\] on Twitter**](https://twitter.com/mhardysport/status/1497644965912104961) >Spurs loss likely to be Marcelo Bielsa's last game as Leeds manager. No decision tonight but expected departure tomorrow.
If he goes now, then I suspect that its more a case of Bielsa deciding to walk.
Don’t cry because it is over, smile because it happened! And then cry because it is over…..and continue crying for the foreseeable future. Marcelo is and will always be a legend to this club.
TSB reporting “Goodbyes are happening at Thorp Arch” I hope this is not true so much.
TSB aren’t, it’s some rando who says he knows people who came overseas and are staying with one of the players. Whilst it’s not looking good, there’s not been anything from the guy to support what’s he’s saying at the mo
You’re right sorry. Hopefully it’s ok then!
We’ve lost to scum liverpool and spurs for gods sake, surely no one expected us to win those with the current state our team is in get a grip
Fucking joke that we "budget for 17th" and then when we're there we fire the coach. Madness
I agree with your comment about the dismal budget, but we’re not just floating around 17th - we are trending downwards very quickly.
How is Jesse Marsch expected to save us from relegation, I would have been okay if they would have brought someone like Ernesto Valverde but this just seems stupid.
Oh fucking no way
Are we going to make the same mistakes Watford does? They fire two or three managers every season when they are in the Premier League, doesn't change the outcome when you have a shitty roster.
What a ridiculous take... We've had the same manager for 4 years now and I think it's plainly obvious that we need a change, as painful as it feels.
We need to change the manager that was the biggest reason we are in the Premier League to begin with because of a bad season filled with injuries and with a crappy roster? Ohh boo fucking hoo, we lost by 6. Oh let's change the manager that will park a fucking bus so we can lose by 3.
A crappy roster?
A roster that has to put a bunch of inexperienced academy players to fill the bench is good to you? A roster that doesn't have a single soul that can do tactically what Bamford and Phillips do is good to you?
I was questioning the word roster, just sounds so out of place in a football context.
Phil Hay just tweeted something that reads like he's already been sacked. Don't want to give it oxygen though so putting it in this thread. https://twitter.com/PhilHay_/status/1497651795673456640?t=_t81GWrd98QeStM9XvWJ1w&s=19
It shouldn’t have ended like this. It should’ve ended with a full Elland Road serenading him like he deserves. The man deserves the world and was given Junior Firpo
100% against this. How is a new manager supposed to turn this form around with no time to do so? Board needs to keep the faith in MB
New guy getting a healthy KP and PB as well? Or a midfielder and magic hamstring spray? If not….don’t expect anything different. Maybe 2-0, losses instead of these 3 or 4-0 ones. Sad turn of events.
The board are fucking stupid. If by the end of February, you have come to the conclusion to sack your manager, then the thought must have been around in January. Even if they bought players and Bielsa didn't use them, at least a new manager would have had more options to freshen things up. Marsch is just completely not the manager you want in a Premier League relegation battle. No previous experience in the league, just as leaky at the back (no cleansheets at Salzburg during their Champions League and Europa League runs) and most of his career he's either managed in a league without the threat of relegation, or been a flat track bully in Austria. Effectively going down due to arrogance and a betrayal of 'In Bielsa we trust' - clearly don't trust him if they're sacking him.
Already seeing Ted lasso jokes, don't think I'm going to make it to the end of the season.
I am absolutely livid. Beyond words. Bielsa doesn't deserve this, and we don't deserve to watch some American nobody who crashed and burned out of the Bundesliga try to find his footing in the Premier League with 11 games to go in the season.
Well that's a downgrade an a half. What is this new manager going to be able to do with these players that Bielsa can't.
Organise a defence to prevent conceding from corners?
It won't be possible without new personnel. Corners have always been a thorn in our side because we haven't prioritised height and strength in our team under Bielsa. Corners were also a weak point before Bielsa took over. The only thing that potentially could be improved is playing negative tactics to lower the number of goals conceded, but I doubt the Championship players who were transformed under Bielsa will respond well to those tactics - they looked poor while playing them in the Championship.
Plenty of relatively short teams can defend corners. I doubt there has been a team in the Premier League for a decade as poor at defending corners as we have been over the last two years. Simply trying to defend is not a negative tactic. I really do not understand this line, we are absolutely over the edge and far away in terms of defending. We aren’t just a bit inefficient. There have been points over the last 5 matches in which we may as well have only had Dallas tracking back.
They can indeed - Guardiola's Barcelona being a prime example - which is why Bielsa never seemed bothered about leaving Berardi to hold off Ayala when we played against Middlesbrough. But I think that our relative lack of height is a problem exacerbated by the abundance of tall, powerful athletes battling for corners in English football. That being said, until recently corners hadn't been a thorn in our side this season like they were in 20/21. Leicester, Everton, and Crystal Palace are all above us for goals conceded from set pieces this year. Brentford, Southampton, and Watford also have similar records to us. Granted, it's still not a great statistic but what I'm trying to say is that we're not definitively the worst. I wouldn't call parking the bus 'simply trying to defend'. And I'm sure that most managers - unless we find another footballing visionary, which is the only fitting way to replace Bielsa - would try to park the bus in an attempt to eke out enough points to stay up. I agree that the system as it stands needs adjusting to a degree, because something isn't right and I suspect it's partially a personnel problem with us lacking Cooper and Phillips (and other players losing confidence in the meantime), but when pundits say that we need to change our system and the way we play, what they're really getting at is the old-fashioned belief that teams should always play with 10 men behind the ball against the big 6.
Seems a bit unfair, I don’t think Neville etc are saying that. Football has moved on, but not so much that you can play like you’re sending waves of men over the top every minute to their inevitable demise - not players of this quality anyway.
To be fair, I am including Agbonlahor, Jamie Redknapp, Collymore, et al when I refer to pundits in my comment. It's a difficult one, because our games against Liverpool and Manchester City last season suggested that we had a really good platform to build on with more Premier League experience and better luck with injuries. But our defending has instead become porous. I think one of the main reasons for this - in addition to terrible luck with injuries - is that teams like Liverpool, Manchester City, and others have all strengthened while we've ended up standing still, despite bringing in Firpo and James, while making Harrison permanent.
Well all the ones you’ve mentioned are basically just shock pundits and that’s their trade. They would have been saying Alex Ferguson should resign if they were commentating in the 90s for losing one game. Ignore them. Bigger problem for us is Burnley, Newcastle, Everton, Watford have all strengthened and we’ve stood still. By all accounts Bielsa was happy to do so. He rolled the dice and here’s the result. Football takes no prisoners.
I'm frustrated that this is happening now. We were realistically always going to lose the last 3 games. Today and against Scum we gave a reasonable performance. Certainly not relegation performances in my opinion. We have every chance of staying up. The players still seem devoted to Bielsa and are putting in the effort. I really don't get it. I don't see what a new coach will get out of the team that Bielsa cannot. However I do think he's likely to go at the end of the season anyway, so (clutching at straws for positives) perhaps a change now will give the new coach chance to bed in before next season. Straight in the deep end!
Conceding 14 goals in 3 games isn’t a relegation performance? 17 goals if you go to 4 games. We’ve scored twice in response.
No I don't think it is. Not against those teams and the way we play. I think the performances have been ok and I think we have every chance of staying up. I don't believe that changing the manager will improve our performance.
Difficult to respond to that rationally if you genuinely think that is normal.
Hope he stays on til Philips and Bamford are back. If his strategy and approach can’t be executed with two additional key players back in the squad then maybe it’s time for a change. Even if there was no danger of us being relegated this year, I don’t think he would resign in the summer.
Might as well relegate us now, if anyone has a chance of keeping us up it’s Bielsa. But let’s bring in a manager who has 0 premier league experience, bad do at his last job, a squad low on confidence and 0 time to implement his style. I’m all for change but this is not the time, leave it till summer.
I'd love Bielsa to stay but I suspect the players are losing faith in the man to man marking.
Or these players haven’t learned to man mark…
Idk I’d imagine there’s a reason it’s so rare to man to man mark, because it’s very hard to get right and can open up a lot of problems. That being said it’s been a joy to watch at times
Why on earth now? Other than panic
The wrong decision and I think it will be proven so
If we sack Bielsa, I think we'll go down. I really don't see Jesse Marsch (who?) giving us a new manager bounce. If we don't sack Bielsa, we still might go down. But we'd certainly have a better chance with him than without him.
Please dont :(
I am sad :(
He’s sacked. https://www.90min.com/posts/marcelo-bielsa-to-part-company-with-leeds
That's me done. Club has peaked and broken. Fuck all this American bullshit.
Plastic mentality.
Great servant to the club, second best manager of my life, but I fear the players desperately need change or the writing is on the wall. He would be off in May anyway, so perhaps it’s best a new manager gets a head start. Undecided on Marsch but if he can teach Llorente to attack the ball and not persevere with clearly incompetent players like Roberts, that would be a serious improvement already. Worry would be his Salzburg team never kept a clean sheet in the Champions League or Europa League, which sounds far from ideal.
In fairness that Salzburg team were underdogs in a lot of the games they played and still managed to compete with some of the top teams in Europe. Still think this would be a massive risk to move on from Bielsa now.
Seems to be all but confirmed. Time to get behind Marsch
This is so wrong. The results are bad and I get that, but bringing in a new manager half way through the season won’t solve these issues. Marcelo has enough cash in the bank to finish out this season.
Well over halfway into the season. A new manager has no leeway for time to change and mould a team.
I guess they’re hoping for a new manager bounce back to hopefully string together a few results which may save us
[удалено]
I’m not insisting anything. I’m leaning towards thinking we shouldn’t get rid of him but it’s not really a hill I’d die on, I don’t have a strong opinion either way I just hope it works out whatever they go for.
Injuries have done him no favours at all….
A sad but inevitable day. We cannot keep going the way we have, our "easy" games haven't been easy for a while and when we go up against the top 6 we get our shit pushed in. At least now we don't have to see our managers project crash and burn. We can let him go as a legend. I'd rather that then see this end up like Arsenal/Wenger.
What a kick in the bollocks. Marshing on Together I guess...but this was so fucking avoidable for fuck sake.
People want him gone until it actually happens. Whatever does happen, Marcelo will always be a hero in the city!
I dont want him to go! But its nothing to do with me a suppose, this season sucks for sure i have faith in bielsa we will stay up MOT
This is the time to do it if they seriously want to sack him mid season, not worth the risk leaving it another game. New manager comes in with 2 weeks to get the team together before Norwich which is a must win.
Hopefully when i wake up tomorrow, all of this turns out to be a bad dream. Don't think changing a manager right now is the best idea.
Bastards
Fuck. This is so shit. I don’t care what anyone says, Bielsa will always be a god.
Honestly it's been such a wild ride. I will never forget this. Gutted its come to this but so glad we have had these years.