Phil Thompson questions Marcelo Bielsa after Leeds’ loss at Birmingham

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Leeds United fell out of the Championship’s top two following a disappointing defeat at the weekend.

Phil Thompson told Soccer Saturday (broadcast on Sky Sports; 6/4; 17:27) that he felt that Marcelo Bielsa attempted to show off by getting Leeds to change system for their clash with Birmingham City on Saturday.

The Whites have fallen out of the automatic-promotion spots with six games to go after a disappointing performance at St Andrew’s. Che Adams scored the only goal on a day where Leeds only managed to put one effort on target.

Leeds adopted a slightly less familiar system against the Blues, with Kalvin Phillips starting as more of a third centre-back. Unfortunately, the Whites could not produce the same fluidity that saw them come from behind on two occasions to beat Millwall last weekend.

And Thompson, somewhat bizarrely, felt that Bielsa cost the team by trying to catch the opposition off guard with the system he deployed.

“At the start I think Bielsa tried to be clever because he started with three at the back, Phillips was moving into midfield and then they went to four,” he told Soccer Saturday.

“And I think it was: ‘Yeah watch me, how tactically, I’m getting this right’, and I thought it was poor. They lacked creativity. Unless Hernandez was on the ball, you never felt that anything was going to happen.”

Anyone who has watched Leeds this season will know that Bielsa has always tended to opt for a back three when the opposition include two strikers. In the Championship however, Birmingham are one of the few sides that do usually play with two forwards, and they have now scored 33 goals between them.

The Leeds players would not have been surprised by Bielsa choosing to start with a back three. Perhaps some would argue that Leeds should be putting more focus on their own strengths, but those who have questioned Bielsa this term have often ended up with egg on their face after being proved seriously wrong.

And had Patrick Bamford scored instead of hitting the post before Adams went down the other end and found the back of the net, the fixture would have been significantly different. And Bielsa’s tactical roll of the dice could have quite easily been looked back upon as his latest masterstroke.