Welcome Jesse Marsch

[Sniffer]

TSB article.

One benefit of longer days on the training pitch at Thorp Arch would be less time for the manager’s media appearances. Three days after turning bashful about his name being sung at Watford — “any time that it draws attention to me, I don’t necessarily like it” — Jesse Marsch was on Talksport’s Breakfast Show, telling them, “There’s even dialogue right now about comparing Marcelo and myself, which I find ridiculous,” before unpinning a narrative grenade and lobbing it right into the middle of the ‘Marsch or Bielsa?’ hot take complex.

Ally McCoist commented on the high number of injuries Leeds have had this season, and in particular how, “the spine of the team has suffered with injuries”. He asked Marsch, “How near are you to getting your team onto the pitch?”

Marsch replied:

“The injury issue, for me, had a lot to do with the training methodology. These players were over-trained and it led to them being physically, mentally, emotionally and psychologically in a difficult place to recover from week to week, game to game.

“I have a very specific methodology with the way I work and I’ve had a reputation for high running data, but also having healthy, fit, strong players – who can meet the standards of the game we want.”

…

“You could see it in their faces. You could see in the 15th minute that some of them were already at the max — and that shouldn’t be the case.

“I know there were a lot of games and guys had to play over and over again because of injuries. I find that in this sport, you have to have a fit team, but the more your best players are healthy and able to perform at a high level, that’s how you create success.

“I’ve worked very carefully through methodologies on how we train, how we play, and how that all fits together.”

None of which actually answered the question about how soon he’ll have a fit squad. Marsch did also acknowledge that he broke Pat Bamford by rushing him back but he keeps apologising for it so I guess that’s fine.

The real crux of this was Marsch giving Talksport such a hot button soundbite they must have been clipping it for socials before the word ‘overtrained’ was even out of his mouth; on their website, this part of the interview is introduced by describing Bielsa as ‘Marsch’s eccentric Argentinian predecessor’.

First let’s do the case for the defence of that ‘eccentric predecessor’, which is easy, because the results happened. Leeds were near the top of the Championship for two seasons, won it by ten points, then stormed into a 9th place finish in the Premier League, a club transformed from the middle-Championship dwelling Myanmar-touring mess it was in summer 2018. Even at the time of Bielsa’s sacking, Leeds were in a position that was only dreamed about for the previous decade. The physical improvement in the players was visible, too: the glow up was real. Whatever Bielsa’s methods were, they worked.

That doesn’t make him or his methods infallible, bulletproof or guaranteed forever. Bielsa, in common with other big thinkers, has a reply before every complaint — he knows the angles — and shortly before he was sacked, he summed up the job of a football coach as precisely as I’ve ever heard: “You have to undo what works before it stops working.”

Bielsa’s methods worked. Then they stopped working. He was supposed to change his methods before that happened. In other words, he was supposed to see the future. We ask all coaches to do this. It’s impossible. That’s why they’re always getting sacked.

More importantly, any debate about Bielsa methods or Marsch’s methods or anybody else’s methods will never ever end because the argument is built on an impossible premise: that there is any such thing as perfect training. If there is, the coach that discovers it will have a team of incredible athletes who will win every match and never get injured. Such perfection sounds impossible to me, and in the meantime, everyone is arguing about the imperfections of what is possible.

Bielsa’s methods always asked a lot of his players. Their efforts were astounding, especially in the Premier League when they didn’t have promotion to aim for. Teams around them and above them proved that you can achieve more than Leeds did without working as hard as Leeds were, and that must have been an ever present temptation as they paid in hours of sweat, exercise and dieting to finish in mid-table, two places above Aston Villa, who were sleeping their way to the top.

Villa had switched to starting training at noon. “Teams normally train at 10.30am or 11am but we were training at different times when we came back [after lockdown] and now we train at 12pm,” Dean Smith told The Times:

“I thought players, young men, now, they’re different. They don’t go to bed like we used to at 11pm. They go to bed at two in the morning. They’ve all got an Xbox, a PS4 and they’re up later. I thought, okay, if they’re getting to bed later, let’s get them up later. Because sleep is such an important part of recovery. We stayed with 12pm training and I feel we get a little bit more from them as players.”

Of course, the next season, Villa sacked Smith, but it’s easy to imagine Kalvin Phillips on England duty comparing lifestyles with Tyrone Mings and wondering what it was all about. That he resisted and stuck with Bielsa’s ways for so long says a lot about him and the other Leeds players.

But something in the other direction caught my attention over the weekend and prompted this blog post. Over at The Athletic, Laurie Whitwell was reporting on the ‘disconnect’ between Ralf Rangnick and his team of arseholes:

The Athletic has been told about grumbles among players over the number of days off between the matches against Atletico Madrid and Leicester City — at one point a run of nine from 13. They were given a five-day break after going out of the Champions League, then those not on international duty had another four days free before coming back the Tuesday ahead of Leicester’s visit.

That day Carrington [training ground] hosted a friendly game against Blackpool’s first team. Mainly set up for United’s under-23s, several senior players featured in the first-half, yet because of the time away, at least one was concerned about going full pelt in case of suffering a muscle strain.

The so-called players at Old Trafford think they’re not being trained hard enough, if only to save their own backside because they reckon they’re risking injuring themselves. And Whitwell had another example of how this can happen, at Bayern Munich in 2017:

German magazine Kicker reported how Arjen Robben took to organising “secret” training sessions with teammates because those laid on by Carlo Ancelotti had not been strenuous enough.

What are we learning here? That some teams train more than others and at different times and some players think they work too hard and others organise extra training to make up for a perceived lack, and some players get injured through over-training and some players get injured from under-training and some players just get injured from training.

It’s almost as if the perfect training regime doesn’t exist, and if it did, everybody would follow it. One criticism of Bielsa was that he didn’t involve himself enough in any such quest, sticking firmly to his methods, but that’s not so; it was reported in the Championship that he used to increase the workload when the team was doing well, and reduce it when they were out of form; it was reported this season that he’d gone a different way, increasing intensity as results worsened, perhaps hoping the players could train their way out of trouble. He was searching for the perfect method, too.

Bielsa did not have perfect training plans, same as any other coach, but what he did in training achieved what other coaches could not achieve. This little Talksport tumult came on a day when Pep Guardiola was heard in a new interview with Telemundo, saying, “Give Bielsa my Barcelona and see how much [more] he wins. Give me his Leeds side and we would be in the Championship.” Marsch might be right that the players looked overtrained when he arrived, but that does not mean Bielsa’s methods were always wrong.

Marsch might also pause to remember that apologising for rushing Bamford back won’t help him play any sooner, and that his new training regime, while it might have reduced the “stress”, has yet to translate into any convincing ninety minute performances. And that if he really doesn’t like attention being drawn to him, when his “emphasis is about the team and about us as a group”, and thinks dialogue comparing him to Bielsa is “ridiculous”, he should avoid going on Talksport and instigating more of it. But he’s definitely going to be asked more about this at his next press conference so I guess the subject is still far from done. ⬢

[Selby White]

Thanks for posting Sniffer.

To me it's a case of saying nothing, it wasn't really needed at this stage.
Of course some injuries can be training based but it's a fact that all clubs get injuries and most have nothing to do with training, we just got them to the wrong (key) players imho.

As someone with a background of sports coaching loved Bielsas methods and without them wonder not only where the team would be playing but what division the likes Ayling, Dallas, Bamford, Cooper, Phillips, etc would be playing now.

I think the Club is set up for a good future, wasn't just a team it's the full set up down to the under 10s that is MB's legacy.
It maybe Jesse but someone is going to benefit big time from what we have here if they make the right decisions.

[The Fonz]

I'll just say silly comments not needed and not done himself any favours.
Put pressure on himself with some interesting matches coming up.
Best way to talk is always through results over a prolonged period.

[Metro1962]

Most of the comments made by Jesse were not an attack on Bielsa personally imo having heard it this morning on TS.

Mountain/Mole hill

[kk white]

Most of the comments made by Jesse were not an attack on Bielsa personally imo having heard it this morning on TS.

Mountain/Mole hill

I tend to agree Metro.

But still - in any walk of life - if your asked an opinion on a predecessor, just politely say that you were not around, therefore can't comment on what went on.

[Metro1962]

Most of the comments made by Jesse were not an attack on Bielsa personally imo having heard it this morning on TS.

Mountain/Mole hill

I tend to agree Metro.

But still - in any walk of life - if your asked an opinion on a predecessor, just politely say that you were not around, therefore can't comment on what went on.

TS have been using ONLY that sound bite about previous tactics so TS being TS obviously some agenda there imo.

[Polkadot]

I'm a massive Bielsa fan, but I don't think there really is much negativity in these words from Jesse.
There is no real opposite between "Bielsas hard training regime lead to 3 brilliant seasons" and "Bielsas hard training regime was too hard this 4th season". I think Bielsa himself would think the comments are pretty fair and reflected.

[Metro1962]

I'm a massive Bielsa fan, but I don't think there really is much negativity in these words from Jesse.
There is no real opposite between "Bielsas hard training regime lead to 3 brilliant seasons" and "Bielsas hard training regime was too hard this 4th season". I think Bielsa himself would think the comments are pretty fair and reflected.

[Shadwell White]

I think JM will learn a lot from this interview. TS and the press only interested in the negatives, but that’s the way our press work so get he needs to learn quickly.
He may have a point about training, although I always got pleasure in the fact that when I was walking the dog at 8.15am , the players were passing me on their way to training.

[Barlow Boy]

I'm a little surprised by what I see as an over-reaction to Jesse's comments.

You all know from my posting on here how much of a Bielsa fan I am and how upset I was when he left. However, there's been suspicions for a while that our lads might be suffering from the training regime and that it might be contributing to injuries - we've discussed it on here, I am pretty sure I could search out a post where I made comments to that effect. I'm not sure we all agreed when it has been discussed in the past but Jesse's comments today shouldn't be a big surprise to anyone who follows the club closely.

I don't see Marsch's comments as particularly having a dig at Bielsa, I don't see it as really pointed criticism and I do find it believable. Marcelo had his way, one of the elements of that way was a very very high intensity training workload and that had two consequences, firstly and positively it gave us the fittest team in the league with the best running stats and enabled our style of play, secondly and not so positively, it has almost certainly contributed to the injuries and fatigue across the squad.

It's ok, every management style and methodology has it's strengths and weaknesses.

Marcelo will always be a legend and close to football deity in my eyes, but he didn't actually walk on water and some of the things he did aren't repeated by every other club in the world for a reason. Even his devotees and other managers that lavish praise on Marcelo don't copy all of his methods - and perhaps in some cases that is for a good reason.

Ok, so maybe Jesse could have been gentler in his choice of words this morning - but contrast that with how very respectful he's been of the previous regime, and Marcelo in particular, since he's landed. He's been the very model of respect and praise for Marcelo.

I don't think we need to start sharpening the pitchforks yet.

Also - I will be flabbergasted and amazed if any of you can look me in the virtual eye and tell me you don't believe there is a single shred of truth to the observation that Marcelo's training methods could have been having some negative consequences - we might not want to believe it, or believe it was the main cause - but don't let's deny that it could have been a factor.

Good, well balanced post.

Whether his comments are a dig at Bielsa or not (personally, I think they are, he’s criticising, therefore it’s a dig), whether his comments are true or not and/or whether Bielsa’s methods are repeated elsewhere is irrelevant to me. My point is say nothing and just get on with your job Jesse.