Marcelo Bielsa reacts to Roofe and Bamford’s displays in Leeds draw

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Patrick Bamford and Kemar Roofe both started Leeds United’s latest Championship game.

Marcelo Bielsa has suggested that Kemar Roofe and Patrick Bamford struggled to combine during Leeds’ 1-1 draw with Middlesbrough on Saturday, in comments reported by Leeds Live.

With Bamford making just one substitute appearance since returning from injury, it may have surprised some when Bielsa decided to hand starts to both the summer signing and the Whites’ top goalscorer at the Riverside Stadium.

It looked like it may well end up being another disappointing afternoon for Leeds as Boro took the lead shortly after the break. And while the Whites responded superbly during the rest of the second-half, it appeared that a 1-0 defeat was on the cards.

Both Roofe and Bamford missed glorious chances to equalise. And Leeds were relying on a 100th minute goal from Kalvin Phillips to secure a share of the points which lifted them back to the top of the Championship.

And after the game, Bielsa appeared to hint that the tactical decision did not work as well as he would have liked, but seemed to suggest that there were positive signs to take from the game.

“They couldn’t combine together a lot,” he said, as reported by Leeds Live. “Bamford missed some balls. And Roofe made many movement and he had deep options.

“Patrick Bamford participated less but he had two or three chances to score and this is very important for us. He played in the most difficult zone of the pitch, because he played in a zone where he was surrounded by four players. He played between the line of three and Obi Mikel and it was hard for him to connect with the game, but in the first half he had a clear chance to score and he had others also in the second half.”

On another day, both Roofe and Bamford would have taken the opportunities that came their way and Leeds may have been reflecting on a fantastic win.

Filling that number 10 role is not proving easy for Bielsa. A number of options have been used since Samu Saiz’s last appearance, and most have actually done fairly well.

But perhaps there were enough signs on show at the Riverside to suggest that Bamford playing up top and Roofe being the one to sit just behind him could be the kind of partnership that enables Leeds to get some more momentum back into their promotion charge.