Speaking on the Official Leeds United Podcast, Patrick Bamford has shared what Marcelo Bielsa told the Leeds squad after their 6-2 defeat to Manchester United.
As you would imagine, spirits weren’t at their highest after the heavy defeat, but Bielsa was quick to defuse the situation, calming everyone down telling them to just look ahead to the next game.
“One of the big things, as soon as we went in the changing room after, obviously, on the pitch it was so annoying because we’ve just been battered by this scoreline,” Bamford said.
“When they scored a goal you could hear them running back and you could hear them laughing, and without the crowd you could hear the noises, and you can hear them laughing amongst themselves, so all the boys are boiling inside, fuming, but there’s no point in getting sent off or doing something stupid because it’s just going to ruin the next game.
“So, as we got in the changing room, all the boys stuck together and said, ‘lads, just forget that one, put it to the side, we don’t blame anyone, people make individual mistakes, but we’re not blaming anyone, we stick together as a team and we just forget about that one.’”
“And to be fair, the manager said the same thing, he said, like we played well, blah, blah, blah, we deserved certain things more, the result was fair, but we forget about that game and look at the next one.”
There’s a reason Bielsa is seen as one of the best manager’s in the world, and this perfectly encapsulates it.
It would have been entirely reasonable for any manager to just lay into his team after watching them lose 6-2 to one of their biggest rivals, but Bielsa took a step back, analysed the game and took the positives from the performance.
Whether or not Leeds can bounce back after such a big defeat against United remainst to be seen, but we’ll find out this weekend as they face another tough challenge in the shape of Burnley.
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