Marcelo Bielsa reacts to Patrick Bamford’s display in Leeds defeat

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Patrick Bamford endured a difficult afternoon as Leeds United suffered a 1-0 defeat.

In comments reported by Leeds Live, Marcelo Bielsa has suggested that Patrick Bamford played better in Leeds’ defeat to Birmingham than he had done in the win against Millwall, while he also provided an explanation behind his decision to take the striker off at St Andrew’s.

Leeds have fallen out of the top two in the Championship after the Blues claimed a 1-0 win on Saturday. Che Adams scored the only goal in the first-half as Garry Monk put a dent in his old side’s promotion bid.

The Whites had their chances to get back into the contest. In fact, Bamford missed an outstanding chance in the moments before Adams’ decisive strike, and it was the summer signing who went on to miss the other golden opportunities that fell to the Whites.

He sent one effort over the bar after getting in front of his man just outside the six-yard box, while he also had a header well saved by Lee Camp. He was replaced by Kemar Roofe during the latter stages as the visitors pushed for an equaliser.

But while the fans may have been extremely critical of Bamford’s performance, Bielsa defended the striker and suggested that he saw an improvement in his display.

“Bamford has a lot character and is a player with high personality. He was better today than in the previous game,” he said, as reported by Leeds Live.

“I did the change because I needed a player with different skills.”

With Birmingham quite happy to defend their lead once they went in front – though Kiko Casilla needed to make a couple of smart saves to deny Adams in the second-half – Leeds needed to be ruthless when chances came their way.

Bamford, on another day, may have buried that initial chance, and the contest could have been completely different. But given his largely anonymous display against Millwall last weekend, and the fact that he has not scored in four, he will be expecting a lot of the criticism to be coming his way.

Bielsa now needs to weigh up whether Bamford did enough to keep his place for Preston on Tuesday having got himself into the right positions on a number of occasions, or whether his lack of success in front of goal should open the door for Roofe to come back into the starting lineup.