After seeing a grown 40-something year old crying his heart out, unable to speak - with JOY - at the fact that we'd finally got back to the Premier League, my wife bought me a picture of Bielsa which now hangs on my office wall. In my entire life I've never had a football related picture on the wall, not even posters as a kid. I make that rather silly point, to emphasise just how much credit Bielsa has in the bank from my perspective - if we got relegated I would still want him to stay, as I'd consider him the best man to get us back into the Premier League at first time of asking, and he's the guy I would want to have another go at solidifying us there.
We fans are so impatient and have such a short memory sometimes, as someone above posted the route to success is rarely a straight line and periods of struggle should be expected. Look at this list:
- second season syndrome is a real phenomena, whether it's due to familiarity and people working out your approach or the drop off in momentum gained from promotion, whatever the reasons it's common enough to be real
- we came up under COVID conditions and the league is different this year with fans back in stadiums
- we've had chronic injury issues (exacerbated by the odd suspension) in the spine of the team (CB, DM, CF... along with all the others)
- it's unrealistic to expect sportsmen to be in form all the time and almost to a man our lads have been performing at levels even they didn't know they were capable of 2-3 years ago, it was bound to tail off and go through a lull at some point (it's just happened to half our team at once, rather than one or two individuals at a time)
- two of our key players (Rapha and Kalvin) have become established internationals and been travelling all over/playing more games, that will be having an impact
- our entire style is based on outrunning the opponents, we've had 3 seasons consecutively without a proper break (COVID and Euros) for half the squad, despite their fitness levels, there may well be some fatigue
You don't have to stretch your thinking at all to come up with a list of perfectly plausible and acceptable reasons why we're having a harder time this year - but we're adapting and the ship is slowly starting to turn, I still have faith we can end the season more strongly in the second half and finish comfortably mid-table. Also, talking about the table and the other teams in the league, this competition is getting harder and harder, look at the investment going into clubs and look how tight it is - there are only 6 points between 7th and 17th. You can't just expect success, or year over year improvement every year, the league is nutty in terms of competition, investment, quality and physicality, there's a reason it's getting a lot more sponsorship/TV revenue than every other major league in the world. We're lucky to even be in the Premier League!
I'm not blind to Bielsa's faults, I agree he's stubborn to the point where it is on the borderline between the positive i.e. having the strength to stand by his convictions and the negative i.e. not changing, when evidence suggests a change is required. I would like to see us with a bit more strength in depth in the first team squad, I think he's misjudged the demands of the EPL and we're a little too light, the league is more physically demanding than any other he has managed in before. With my limited information from the sidelines I too sometimes think his substitutions are a little questionable at times, along with his propensity for playing people out of position (favouring experience and reliability over specialist skills) - and I definitely disagree with his perception of Roberts (but still hope to be proved wrong!).
Also I do want to add - I understand the club's strategy of focusing on the u23s almost to the point it feels like the first team gets a bit neglected at times and why they waited for Forshaw to get back before investing in another midfielder. They're trying to walk a very fine line with investing enough in the short term to keep us in the Premier League, whilst creating sustainability for the future. If we become a yo-yo club like Norwich or Sheff Utd or like Sunderland were for years, we'd all be complaining about that too. It's got to be really tough walking that line, avoiding doing a Ridsdale but keeping the fans happy and keeping us up. I'd rather have another 2-3 years scrapping around 15-17th in the league if it means we have the next 30+ years in the league, rather than pumping billions in, getting a managerial merry-go-around and imploding after a couple of years in the top 4 - we've done that once and it turned out really
, so sustainability of EPL status has to be the #1 objective, over and above all other short term objectives.In summary returning to the topic of Bielsa, he has absolutely transformed our club, we'll be feeling the benefits of his influence for literally decades to come. His influence on our infrastructure, training facilities, training methods - even just the morale and feel good factor amongst the backroom staff in the club - none of it can be overstated. For me he has to stay, he has to be backed to the hilt and we all need to practice a bit of patience.
If and when he does choose to go, I hope we can share him with Newell's Old Boys as a Director of Football or just an ambassador, or advisor for our future coaches - I want him around our club for life.
