QPR chief Les Ferdinand has insisted he doesn’t believe Marcelo Bielsa’s claim that he has spied on all of Leeds United’s opponents this season.
The United manager made the bombshell claim on Wednesday evening about all the teams in the Championship after a member of his staff was caught watching a Derby training session last week.
Ferdinand is not convinced and claims logistics would make it very difficult for Leeds to carry out, given the different schedules and training programmes of clubs.
The QPR director of football told the Evening Standard: “I find that hard to believe. People do different things on different days so unless the person is there every day, all week, what are they going to see? I just think he’s been caught out.
“If you’re sending people to clubs, ethically that doesn’t seem right but people gather information anyway. It’s been blown up into something I really don’t understand. I’m not quite sure why people are talking about points deductions and so on.
“We have data on every team we play. We know their free-kicks, their set- pieces because that’s why we employ our analysis people. We send scouts to their matches, not just one match, three matches so that we have a full report.”
OPINION
Bielsa’s extraordinary press conference on Wednesday has led to raised eyebrows across English football, with some applauding his astonishing level of detail and others bizarrely (yes, you Dean Saunders) claiming he was being disrespectful to hardworking British managers. Ferdinand should not question the Argentine’s honesty or integrity. If he says he has spied on every opponent, you can bet your life the intern instructed to do so would have been expected to be totally meticulous and thorough. In some quarters, there appears to be a lack of understanding of Bielsa, whose unorthodox approach challenges so many assumptions and ways of working. A 70-minute Powerpoint presentation has provided an astonishing level of transparency into the often closed world of football, where those outside the village so rarely have any idea of what goes on inside it. Ferdinand is actually fairly measured in his reaction, unlike some, but he shouldn’t question Bielsa’s honesty. That is now not up for debate.