Dean Ashton claims Marcelo Bielsa hasn’t used his Leeds United squad properly in recent weeks

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Leeds United will meet Derby County in the Championship playoff semi-final.

Dean Ashton has been critical in the manner in which Leeds United boss Marcelo Bielsa has used his squad recently as his team enter the playoffs in a bad run of form.

The Yorkshire outfit suffered a morale-deflating 3-2 defeat at already-relegated Ipswich on Sunday to end their regular season in a very poor fashion.

Despite sitting third in the league, Leeds are the out-of-form team heading into the playoffs as Frank Lampard’s Derby County await them in the semi-finals.

Speaking to EFL on Quest (05/05/2019 at 9:50 pm), Ashton urged Leeds to go back to their form from the start of the season where they had something to prove because there is this perception that ‘everyone hates them’.

“I don’t think Bielsa has used his squad as well as he should have done during this period,” Ashton told Quest. “I felt at the start of the season that’s why they did well [in wanting to prove people wrong] because everyone hates them and they don’t want them to do well.

“They were superb in that first half of the season and somehow that team talk [in the playoff semi-final] has to be about being the underdog now and proving everybody wrong because they have been poor recently.”

Bielsa’s tactics are without a doubt one of the most demanding in the league. His demand to keep the ball in play at all times is what caused opposition problems during the early part of their campaign, but they have seemingly struggled to maintain that recently.

Leeds head into the playoffs facing a Derby team that is full of confidence after they secured their top-six spot on the final day of the regular season by beating fourth-placed West Brom.

The one positive for the Whites is that during the past two seasons, the team finishing third has gone on to earn promotion to England’s top-flight – Fulham and Huddersfield Town.

Despite their recent poor run, Bielsa will be fully aware that if his team can get to Wembley then they will be near-on impossible to stop given the aggressive manner in which they play.