Don Goodman praises Leeds United boss Marcelo Bielsa for his ‘integrity’ during Aston Villa draw

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Leeds United and Aston Villa are heading for the playoffs.

Sky Sports pundit Don Goodman has applauded Leeds United boss Marcelo Bielsa for showing ‘integrity’ during their controversial 1-1 draw with Aston Villa on Sunday afternoon.

In a high-intensity game with talking points throughout, the biggest moment of the match came during the second half when Mateusz Klich scored after 72 minutes.

Jonathan Kodjia went down injured in the middle of the park, with the ball falling to Tyler Roberts out wide and it seemed as though he was going to put the ball out of play. Whilst everyone stopped, including the Villa players, Roberts played a through ball to Klich, who scored the goal to the anger of the opposition players.

Speaking during his Sky Sports commentary stint, Goodman was in awe of Bielsa, who decided minutes later to allow Villa to walk the ball into the back of the net because of the manner in which they scored their goal.

“I applaud, I really applaud Marcelo Bielsa’s integrity,” Goodman told Sky Sports. “[He was] criticised earlier on in the season, he’s saying ‘let them have the goal!’. He [Jansson] is not happy. He disagrees and he actually tries to defy Marcelo Bielsa. You can see he doesn’t want Villa to have the goal.

“You can see morally it’s right that Leeds do give them the goal and Albert Adomah didn’t enjoy the fact that Jansson tried to stop him.”

Straight after Klich put the ball in the back of the net, a number of Villa players surrounded the Leeds man with pockets of melee’s taking place across the pitch.

That transferred onto the sidelines, with Villa manager Dean Smith and his coaching staff in a heated conversation with the opposition before Bielsa decided to allow the away team to walk the ball into the back of the net.

Amongst all that, Villa winger Anwar El Ghazi was shown a straight red for an elbow on Patrick Bamford. Replays showed that the referee got his decision wrong.

Both teams are now heading into the playoffs and if they can beat their respective teams in the semi-finals then they will meet each other once again in the final.