They were once ‘Dirty Leeds’ but now they’re cleaning up
LeeDs cleaned up on the pitch and then cleaned up afterwards off it — a tidy performance doesn’t just last 90 minutes as far as Marcelo Bielsa is concerned.
Goals from Mateusz Klich, ezgjan alioski and Pablo hernandez sealed a comprehensive victory and moved leeds back to the top of the Championship, ahead on goal difference of Middlesbrough, who are due at elland Road on Friday.
Bielsa, the former argentina and Chile head coach, is the man who inspired a generation of managers, and his ‘el loco’ nickname — The Mad one — is proof that his methods are unconventional.
The squad he inherited from Paul heckingbottom have certainly found that out.
norwich’s pink away dressing room was tidied up afterwards on Bielsa’s instructions and the man himself pitched in by clearing away leftovers from the away dugout.
‘he wants this but players are not the same — they leave things here and there,’ said Macedonia midfielder alioski.
‘ he wants to change this mentality — that we are clean. after the game you can see how clean it is inside the dressing room. and the coach helps also. he cleans there.
‘It’s really a respect he wants. It’s not only football — it’s also how the person is outside. he wants us to learn it’s not only the football that is important. none of the players have ever worked like this before.’ The leeds squad realised that their lives would no longer be the same after Bielsa arrived and introduced triple sessions on the training ground for a squad that faded away badly last season following a tabletopping start.
‘We went in at eight in the morning and we went home at seven or eight in the evening or maybe we sleep in the hotel so we were never at home and we didn’t see the family,’ alioski added. ‘It was really, really hard work but it was the right shout from the coach.’
after a sluggish start, leeds played expansive, flowing football once they kicked into gear. Klich slotted in the first after Tim Krul could only parry a diving header from alioski, who embarrassed the keeper at his near post five minutes later.
hernandez curled in a third midway through the second half and received enthusiastic praise from Bielsa, via his interpreter. Bielsa does not speak english in public and alioski revealed he rarely communicates with his players either, preferring to relay instructions through his coaches.
‘The boss is the boss and he doesn’t speak to the players, he doesn’t say something to you on the pitch and it’s only the staff,’ he said.
‘It’s something different but it’s very interesting also for us players because it’s always the staff that come to say something. But it’s really nice when he comes to you and says something positive.
‘he says, “Bravo, it’s good” or, “not good”. When he says something to you, you see he
really understands something and when he says to do this you know you must adapt.’
Norwich manager Daniel Farke speaks excellent English, but probably wishes he doesn’t, so often is he now quizzed about that pink dressing room, painted in the hope of lowering opposition testosterone levels for a trendy ‘marginal gain’.
Farke insisted the colour scheme was nothing to do with him — a clear case of a manager trying to gloss over a result — but backed Krul to play better.
Defender Grant Hanley felt the same. ‘He has not played a lot of football recently, so maybe it’s just taking him a bit of time to get back into the swing of things,’ the Scot suggested.