Been thinking about replying to this thread for a while but figured I would just be repeating what I have said elsewhere and between Deebo's twitter paraphrasing a few posts earlier and the above post by Clark everything I'd want to say has been said anyway.Clarke One Nil wrote:For me, a more useful question is ‘How do we ensure that Bielsa stays?’ After so many years becalmed in the championship and lower, the positive revolution he has brought to the club and beyond is amazing. It’s the type of joyful football that reminds me why I fell in love with the game as a child, and as a bonus led by a humble ethical manager.
BielsaBall has been ups and downs all the way. We started off playing glam-rock football, dropped into the playoffs and lost to Derby, came back stronger and got promoted, over-performed expectations last season, and are now going through a rough patch that looks worse than it is with almost a full team of players injured.
Everyone loves BielsaBall when results are going well, and I love it during the rough patches too. It’s not that he doesn’t have a Plan B. He has lots of mini-Plan-B’s during every game. But his big-picture priority during each game seems to be to further embed and get better at Plan A, which I think is wise in the long run.
It will take years, if ever, to steadily approach matching the mega-wealthy clubs. We simply don’t have the money to buy our way up there, and we’ve seen what happens when we borrow to try doing that. Bielsa’s small-squad philosophy can be crippled by freak injury pile-ups, but it also means that we are bringing through young players.
As an aside, I don’t see us being in a relegation battle. We’re not even in the relegation places, we have a full team of players to return, and half a season to work our way up the table. But wherever we end up, I’m enjoying every minute of it.
It's not time for him to go, it won't be time for him to go at the end of the season and I hope when he does eventually go that he stays involved in our club in some capacity.