It’s not often a team emerges from the wreckage of a 4-1 Premier League defeat with their reputation enhanced. But while Crystal Palace’s four-goal victory over Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds United in November 2020 may look comfortable on paper, reality told a very different story.
Crystal Palace needed a header from a corner, a stunning Ebere Eze free-kick and a Helder Costa own goal to see off a Leeds side who dominated 65 per cent of the ball at Selhurst Park, created a hatful of chances, and only saw a first-half Patrick Bamford goal chalked off by the harshest of VAR calls. It was a 4-1 defeat in name only.
Andros Townsend knew even before Leeds arrived in South London that this was no run-of-the-mill, Premier League newcomer. This was something different.
“Everyone’s been fascinated by Leeds and Bielsa this season,” Townsend, who started in that meeting between Palace and the Yorkshire giants, told talkSPORT.
“When you watch on TV, you don’t get the full view of the way they play. They’re incredible. Very special. It was great to experience it live in the flesh.”
Leeds United legend Marcelo Bielsa could replace Frank Lampard at Everton
Now at Everton, Townsend could soon be getting a closer look at one of the game’s deep-thinkers in action, reports suggesting that Bielsa is Everton’s number one target to replace Frank Lampard on Merseyside (The Guardian).
Townsend witnessed the best and the worst of Bielsa’s teams on that balmy November afternoon two-and-a-half years ago. The exhilarating, free-flowing attacking football, and the relentless pressing. But also the reckless, almost suicidal approach to defending; the vulnerability that eventually cost Bielsa his job at Elland Road.
The arrival of one of world football’s most influential tacticians at Goodison Park – taking over from a man who, across three jobs, is yet to imprint any sort of a clear identity on any of his teams – may capture the imagination of an Everton fanbase sick to the back teeth of near-constant mediocrity and instability.
The rough and the smooth
But hiring Bielsa always comes with a warning label. An appointment brimming with potential choking hazards. Can Bielsa impart his vision on a squad lacking pace or legs, especially with funds at a premium? Can he organise a defence among the worst in the Premier League? In Leeds’ final five games under the enigmatic Argentine, they conceded a staggering 20 goals. An average of five per 90 minutes.
The depths, under Bielsa, were lower than the Marianas Trench. But the heights were as high as Everest itself. Finishing ninth in the Premier League in 2020/21, Bielsa gave Leeds a clear, coherent identity, an emblematic, exciting style of play; constructing a mansion out of mud and straw. A Michelin star meal out of lentils and stock.
If Bielsa could turn Luke Ayling, Gianni Alioski, Matuesz Klich and Liam Cooper from Championship also-rans into Premier League stars, imagine what he could do with Anthony Gordon, Amadou Onana, Nathan Patterson and Dwight McNeil.
If Sean Dyche is the very definition of a ‘safe pair of hands’, then Bielsa is precisely the opposite. His managerial career reads like John Travolta’s filmography. If Leeds was his Pulp Fiction, then that two-day Lazio stint was Battlefield Earth.
The question Everton must now answer is whether the potential rewards offset the potential pitfalls.
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