Bielsa now crazy for promotion
IT HAS not taken long for Marcelo Bielsa to comprehend what most observers have known for some time – the Championship is a madhouse.
“You’re right, the Championship is crazy,” said the Leeds manager when asked for an appraisal of the season as it nears the halfway point.
“Sometimes that is linked to not having any big team that dominates the others and this season you don’t have any team that continually dominates their opponents.”
A fourth successive win was not negotiated without a few bumps in front of another 30,000-plus crowd at Elland Road.
But two goals from forward Kemar Roofe helped keep a spirited QPR at bay – a team that had led through a clinical finish from Nahki Wells.
Unlike Bielsa, who arrived in Yorkshire only in the summer, QPR manager Steve McClaren has long been aware of the unrelenting demands of a 46-game Championship.
There are many obstacles to negotiate before the key to the Premier League can be grabbed. Leeds have been trying for 14 years.
But McClaren believes they have the right man in charge to bring back the good old days to Leeds.
“They are going to be up there without a shadow of doubt,” he said.
“There will be four or five clubs over the Christmas period who will pull away. This Championship is a tough league. You’ve got to win ugly at times and that’s what Leeds did against us.
“There are going to be some very disappointed owners at the end of the season. When you are relegated into the Championship you gamble to go back up.
“Leeds have taken that gamble this time around but there’s no one with more experience than Marcelo Bielsa to get a team promoted. But I bet he’s finding this a very, very tough league.
“With 37,000 sell-outs there is big pressure, big expectations. It’s all down to who can handle the pressure the best, not just in terms of management but in terms of the squad.
“It was a strange league to start with. It was very even. Now we are starting to see six, seven, eight teams coming through, Aston Villa being one of them and I expect Stoke to as well.”
QPR, McClaren fears, will not be one of them.
“Our aim after the first four games, which we lost, was to get out of the bottom,” he said. “We’ve climbed the table well.
“We’ve got within reach of the promotion places. We’ve had a couple of bad results but this is the Championship. We’ve still got a lot to do. We can’t strengthen in January so we are just hoping to keep our players together.”