‘Watch closely’: Bielsa admits two Arsenal players caused Leeds major problems yesterday

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Leeds United boss Marcelo Bielsa has admitted to Leeds Live that both Arsenal midfielders, Granit Xhaka and Dani Ceballos, caused his side big problems.

Arsenal managed to establish a 4-0 lead over Bielsa’s Leeds side, before the Whites made any sort of response.

And Bielsa feels that the reason why his side struggled so much at the Emirates Stadium is due to their failure to mark Ceballos and Xhaka out of the game well enough.

“For me one of the most difficult things to neutralise from the opponents was how their two defensive midfielder play,” Bielsa said.

“You watch closely in the first half, one of the biggest things for us was that we didn’t manage to control Xhaka and Ceballos. In front of them Odegaard played, who is an offensive player.

“If Klich or Dallas had played against Odegaard before the game, neither Dallas nor Klich are defensive midfielders and Pascal can play in this position. In our team the defensive midfielder is the third defender. In our team, the two centre-backs and the defensive midfielder are the ones that defend the most.

“If I had interpreted that Klich or Dallas was our third most defensive player I think we would have had even more problems than we did.

“I think the biggest issue that we had was that we were not able to neutralise the circulation between the two centre-backs and the two centre-mids in the first half.”

Kalvin Phillips’ absence may have hurt Leeds in this respect, as he is the most powerful member of their midfield options.

Phillips’s ability to get among opposition midfielders is always sorely missed when he is absence, and Leeds will be keen to get him off the treatment table sooner rather than later.

Arsenal will surely be delighted with Bielsa’s comments though, as they show the strength in depth that they have.

Dani Ceballos only came into the team due to injury, with Thomas Partey out, but the Spaniard put in an extremely impressive display, as Arsenal picked up a valuable three points.