MB'S PRESS CONFERENCES

Leeds United news here, transfer rumours, club affairs, players, fans, etc.
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MyNameIsMark
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Re: MB'S PRESS CONFERENCES

Post by MyNameIsMark »

Thanks so much, Scottish Leeds, for taking time out to do this. Even if some of it is slightly lost in translation, it's absolutely fascinating to read and, as Rigger says, it all just makes so much sense. Plain, simple & effective. This is fast becoming my favourite thread on the whole forum!! ha!!!

There's so much to admire about the guy, besides his ethos & approach to football management. Like, apologising for his behaviour shortly after the full-time whistle at Millwall. I mean, who else would even do that in the UK. The man has so much humility & respect for the game.

Another thing, I'd put good money on the notion that every f***ing manager in the UK is listening to what Biesla's saying.....and taking notes.
Last edited by MyNameIsMark on 21 Sep 2018, 05:37, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: MB'S PRESS CONFERENCES

Post by Deleted User 5081 »

rigger wrote:Every single thing he says makes sense. None of it is rocket science, just simple honest logic.
What's amazing is that very few others actually do what he does - get the players fitter than ever, pass it simple, keep it and tire out the opposition.
I love that fact about only two points being earned by sides after they've faced us too.

That just proves his methods can work.
The problem is sustaining it all .. Let's hope we can.
He uses a lot of Psychology and human behavior analysis in his management style, It's almost borderline hypnosis and i have to admit i'm already acting like someone else when i listen or read what SL posts :lol:

I really do believe we are the real deal under Bielsa. There is a magical effect so to speak and the players are drowning in his wisdom and experience and dishing out the football that matches this. I am loving every second of it and I haven't felt like this as a Leeds fan for many many years. Its great.
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Re: MB'S PRESS CONFERENCES

Post by Davycc »

MyNameIsMark wrote:......
There's so much to admire about the guy, besides his ethos & approach to football management. Like, apologising for his behaviour shortly after the full-time whistle at Millwall. I mean, who else would even do that in the UK. The man has so much humility & respect for the game.
Agreed, even the point he made a bout Cooper being captain, whether you agree or not he emphasised that a captain needs to be a "good" person etc and that seems to be the general opinion of him from the other players.
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SiMamu
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Re: MB'S PRESS CONFERENCES

Post by SiMamu »

Davycc wrote:
MyNameIsMark wrote:......
There's so much to admire about the guy, besides his ethos & approach to football management. Like, apologising for his behaviour shortly after the full-time whistle at Millwall. I mean, who else would even do that in the UK. The man has so much humility & respect for the game.
Agreed, even the point he made a bout Cooper being captain, whether you agree or not he emphasised that a captain needs to be a "good" person etc and that seems to be the general opinion of him from the other players.
Think this is definitely correct. Whilst Cooper does have some flaws as a footballer, he definitely seems like a pretty decent guy. I can certainly imagine him being a good person to go to for a teammate who is struggling with something, with Cooper offering the right kind of support and guidance.
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SCOTTISH LEEDS
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Re: MB'S PRESS CONFERENCES

Post by SCOTTISH LEEDS »

Marcelo, what went wrong today?

The proposal I chose for this game at the beginning was not the right one. Phillips played in front of Jansson and Cooper. The goal was to make the link thank to Kalvin from defence to attack and we couldn’t reach this goal. In the first 30 minutes we were not fluid to move the ball and we didn’t feel safe because we didn’t recover the ball well.

Kalvin Phillips had to assume the consequences of a mistake that he didn’t make, but I made the mistake. When I did this substitution, in the last hour of the game we dominated the opponent, more than dominated the opponent. We didn’t suffer any situations and we created chances to score.

So the analysis of the performance is that it was better, but the play was not better. The game was very tough. It was not easy for us to move the ball. We made many technical mistakes and we were not fresh enough to develop our game, our style, because spaces were smaller and this exhausted our offensive players. The small spaces exhausted our offensive players.

We played in a manner that could have allowed us to get another result but we can't be satisfied how we beat the game.
How disappointed were you with the manner of the goals conceded?

No. The opponent for us is a difficulty that we have to resolve. We were better than our opponent. We should have demonstrated that, getting another result.
The visitors netted twice in the first half hour

If we had played well, instead of having eight chances to score we would have had 20 chances to score. And the feelings would be different. It’s hard to analyse a game and talk about what you deserve when the performance is not good. But even if we didn’t play well, you deserve or not the result at the end of the game.

To make conclusions about this loss, I would take into account the mistake I made in the beginning because when I corrected the mistake, the rival had already scored two goals and our team was less confidence and it’s a high price to pay when you make a tactical mistake.
You've had an excellent start - how would you expect the players to react now you've had a defeat?

We have the obligation for each game. We have to correct what was wrong. We have to recover from the mistake we made but it’s an exercise that we do after every game.


Even if the state of mind is very important in football, as you could see a positive state of mind didn’t allows us to play the kind of game we wanted to play. At the same time we can say that the feelings of this loss won’t prevent us from getting a good result in the next game.
One of your coaches got a yellow card in the second half, do you any complaints with the referee or the timewasting in the game?

No. I don’t have any complaints against the referee.

The situation that he had to solve are the one we saw and he used the rules to solve them, so we have nothing to say against him. He is not responsible for the facts that he has to judge. He has to take a decision about the facts, the events that happened in this game and I think he took the right decisions.


The irritation that the decision of the referee created are linked with the fact that we couldn’t do something else in the pitch. The irritation was also due to the fact the same event happened several times. But all that happened was respecting the rules. What I mean by that is you make a mistake, you get sanctioned and then the referee can sometimes take the right decision, sometimes he can take the wrong one. But I don’t think he had an influence on the result. For example if a player goes to the ground he has the obligation to stop the game, has to wait until the player gets off the pitch. He allows the player to go inside the pitch.

The problem is that this happened many times because the opponent had many injuries and this provoked irritation from those of us who wanted to have a different result. But I see this as we couldn't do anything more to get another result.
Why was Kalvin Phillips the player you chose to sub off in the first half?
Marcelo Bielsa prepares to bring on Stuart Dallas in the first half. Championship - Leeds United v Birmingham City - Saturday 22 September 2018 - Elland Road
Dallas came on for Phillips in the 34th minute (Image: Alex Dodd/CameraSport)

I think I explained this. Phillips was in the line of three when we were defending and playing as a No 4 when we have the ball. I took this decision because at Millwall, Klich played as a No 4, Phillips as a centre-back. In the game against Preston Phillips played as a No 4, and Klich did a very good game as a No 8. Preston was playing with just one No 9, Birmingham with two No 9s. So the decision I took, defending with three and when we had the ball we were defending with a line of two.

So Phillips was playing as a centre- back in a defensive situation, and playing as a No 4 when we had the ball. The goal was to have Klich playing as a No 8, like against Preston. This didn’t work and it’s a consequence of the decision I took that didn't work.

In the first half hour we didn’t give the impression that we were safe defensively and we couldn’t make the link between defence and attack because Phillips didn't receive the ball. When this was clear I decided Dallas would play in the position of Ayling and I took the decision that Ayling would play in a three, a more stable line of three and I also took the decision to try to make Klich drop less as possible. This was a more conservative measure, gave a good balance to the team. We were safe defensively and even if we didn’t play well, we didn’t give the feeling that we were unstable.

That’s why I say that Phillips suffered from this decision. He’s not responsible for the problems that our team had during the first half hour. I’d like to make a reference. Which team played better? And if we can say one of the two teams played well. I have to talk about the result that we got and the fact that if we deserved the result or not. So we have many things to take into account and from my point of view, from my position, it’s hard to make this kind of analysis because I can’t base myself on the fact that we played well because the quality of the game was not that well.

Having said that, we dominated the game during 70 and 0% of the time and we had twice as more chances to score than the opponent. So it’s another perspective of the same situation. Of course if we assume our responsibility, we could have won this game, but we couldn’t win this game. It was a home game. There was a big difference in the ranking and without making any opinion on the players of the opponent I’m sure our players are not inferior to those of our opponent.

So we don’t have a lot of margin to find any justification.

Can I just ask the name of the coach who was cautioned?

I don’t even know who received a yellow card. I thought I would receive the yellow card, that I would be responsible for the behaviour of my staff, not because I behaved bad, but because I’m responsible for the behaviour of my staff.

I repeat again, we don’t hold a grudge against the referee and if he felt that one of us judged him and he decided to book one of us, we assume the responsibility.
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Re: MB'S PRESS CONFERENCES

Post by SCOTTISH LEEDS »

You have got to just love the guy haven’t you? Respectful and honest to the hilt.
He’s explained my question why Ayling played better after Phillips went off and Dallas came on. He also put the ref in perspective without slating Birmingham players....but you know exactly what he feels about their players acting and time wasting. The guy is a diplomat.
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Re: MB'S PRESS CONFERENCES

Post by SCOTTISH LEEDS »

Take positives from Saturday?

It’s not a responsibility of the players. It’s a decision I took, and a wrong decision. The reality of the game indicated to me I did not take the right decision. I knew we had two options.

The possibility of building a line of three with Bill Ayling or Phillips. I decided to build the line of three with Phillips, making him do movements forward and backwards. Two possibilities of being in front of Cooper and Jansson or behind.

With this system I could keep all of the good things from the Preston game. Samu and Klich attacked well from the centre to the sides and Phillips started the game well as a four. I wanted to keep all of these positive features of the team.

When we didn’t have the ball I wanted to build with a line of three and with the ball a four, but it didn’t work. This was a mistake. I thought it would work, but it didn’t. That’s why the players are not responsible and I will try not to make any mistakes.

Learn about the players from defeat?

We had a problem. We had two goals we conceded. We couldn’t change the situation. What we did was not enough. In spite of this I think we didn’t deserve to lose, I even think we deserved to win. We didn’t play well, it was very hard to play well. These are my conclusions.

Next challenge to respond to defeat?

Whenever you lose you always want to win. If it’s a derby the willpower to win increases.

Spoken to players about mentality after last year's decline?

It’s very difficult to make any comparison because I was not here last year. IO know what happened last year, I know what you are trying to underline, I know it’s a derby, but I don’t think it’s good to compare both situations. The good idea is to resolve this situation right now.

It’s difficult to make comparison like the one you suggest. It’s not the best thing to predict you are going to have storms. We always try to be consciously optimistic and we have solid arguments to build optimism.

We’ll have to show that next Friday.

Forshaw - ready to start?

Yes, Adam is a player ready to play. There is a difficulty he has to solve. This difficulty he can only solve by playing. Before getting injured he was the best player in the team. He was the best because he had six pre-season games to be fit. He has not played in the last month-and-a-half. He’s physical performance is top(?). The real proof is during the game and the challenges of that. Now we are in this process, but he’s ready to play if we need him.
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Re: MB'S PRESS CONFERENCES

Post by SCOTTISH LEEDS »

Injuries

Bamford and Brown won’t be with us for a long time. Roofe is close to the first team, not immediately, but he’s close. Berardi and Pablo also are close to the first team, not as close as Roofe.

Shaughnessy it will be a little longer. Shackleton is already in the first team.

Changes?

I won’t change any player.

What have players shown in training?

You don’t react in the same way after a win than after a loss. After the game we lost, we asked some questions together. We built our conclusions together. We have had so far two training session where each player can express himself.

The conclusions are positive ones and I have a lot of hope for Friday’s game. I don’t know if I answered your question.

Enjoy seeing them express themselves?

I am happy with that. Maybe I don’t understand the question. There is only one possible answer to the question. How could something positive make me sad?

Sheffield Wednesday - thoughts?

I couldn’t tell you. I think it’s a team that has many possibilities tactically. The differences are not linked to their defence only. Also have different possibilities for attacking midfielders and strikers.
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Re: MB'S PRESS CONFERENCES

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How to combat their strengths?

They have many offensive players with different features. They played all of them. Number nine and 17 in the axis, 45, 19, 37, 20, these are many offensive players. They combine together in different ways and play in different positions. We have to adapt to how they play and how they position themselves.

Birmingham's low block being copied?

Apart from the style we chose we have many teams in the Championship who play like that. Half of the games so far had these features. I honestly think we have all the ingredients to play against these teams. It's something common and frequent to attack in small, reduced spaces. When you have a team that defends in its own half you have small spaces and when you have small spaces the offensive players don’t make movements to free themselves. When you have free spaces the natural movement is to take the free space.

When you have many bodies in the small space the trend is close and ask for the ball. This is the worse thing you can do because if you do that we already have small spaces and if we do that, these spaces become even smaller. This is the difficulty created by the opponent. We know what we have to do to solve this kind of problem. The first step is knowing what to do, the second is doing it and the third is doing it well. You have to imagine what would happen if both teams played the same way. What kind of spectacle would you have?

Braver passing?

It’s not about daring to do something because the only thing to do is that because if you don’t, you just stop playing. If you don’t make passes, the only thing is to play long balls and give the ball back to the opponent.

What you are talking about, the system of playing against small spaces, if we play like that the only solution is to wait for the opponent’s mistake, the one playing behind the line in his own half. The opponent is waiting for your mistakes. It’s a legitimate process (confused sentences here). When they try to lead the other team to make a mistake and with that mistake, they want to try to take advantage of the mistakes made the team that wants to play. They want to counter into the wide open spaces.

You have two paths - either you risk playing and make a mistake because when you play it’s implicit you can make a mistake. The other path is you don’t play. This is a possibility too. Just imagine a game where both teams do not want to play. If the last game lasted 15 minutes, if we did exactly the same, we would play only 25 minutes out of 90.

This is among the rules. The rules allow you to do that, but this is not the spirit of the game. I assume my position regarding this problem. My position is to try to reach the beauty of the game. It’s a lot more difficult to reach the beauty when only one team wants to play. Please don’t understand what I’m saying that the fact of reducing spaces and not playing, if you do this, the rules allow you. I’m not complaining about that. I’m just talking about the difficulties we faced. The fans who are the centre of our activity is obviously in love with the result. We should know, also, this link with the result, we should ask ourselves if the fans are ready to put, as a priority, the game.

We could ask, for example, to the fans of Leeds, what they would have preferred: us to lose as we lost trying to overcome the opponent, even if we couldn’t play well, and assuming all difficulties we faced, or would the fans have preferred we draw the game without playing because if we hadn’t played, we could have got one point.

We have to point out these aspects.
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Re: MB'S PRESS CONFERENCES

Post by SCOTTISH LEEDS »

Phillips - difficult being withdrawn early twice

I decided to substitute Kalvin. This does not draw the portrait of Kalvin, it draws my own. If you deeply analyse the decision I took you will say I corrected a mistake I made. For me, it’s a very difficult situation for two reasons. The last thing I want is to hurt a player as noble as Phillips because he’s very generous. I can’t make the same mistake again. If I think the game is not well designed and I don’t take a solution, I make a double mistake because the first mistake is I made a mistake and I wouldn’t dare to correct the mistake. I take the decisions I think are the best ones.

We could say ‘poor Phillips’ but the people who understand football say ‘what a bad decision Bielsa took because he has to change after 30 minutes a decision he took.’

When I didn’t substitute Phillips, he didn’t make any mistake. BY making the change I made the mistake.
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