Leeds United medical chief Rob Price has had a thinly-veiled dig at Marcelo Bielsa for failing to divulge more details about the club’s injured players.
In an update about the fitness of Gaetano Berardi in a detailed medical report on injured senior stars for the official Leeds website, Price claimed the club’s supporters aren’t as well informed over crocked stars setting off on the comeback trail as they should be.
The medic gave an example of Berardi’s comeback for the Leeds Under-23s at the start of the week.
“We use the Under-23 games as part of the rehab process- just because he was going to play 45 minutes on Monday, we still think he is a fair way away from being involved with the team and perhaps that message sometimes doesn’t get out there as well as it should,” Price explained.
“It is a really complicated injury, he actually ruptured one of his hamstrings. We scanned him just to make sure he hadn’t done anything again following Monday night’s game and everything is nice and intact on the hamstring that he ruptured.
“However the other hamstrings are having to take more of the load whilst the other one recovers, so there is a little bit of fluid around that is more because of an overuse.”
OPINION
No two ways about it. There is only one person responsible for the “message” that gets out about rehabilitating Leeds players – and that’s the manager. Bielsa’s lack of English can’t be used as a legitimate excuse. He uses a translator to help him give detailed United press briefings ahead of every first-team fixture, some of which extend for an hour. A curiosity is that the unorthodox Argentine is more open than any high-profile manager about his team’s selections, routinely naming his starting XI 48 hours before kick-off. When it comes to injuries, he prefers to keep the media and supporters in the dark. It’s not that Bielsa is deliberately lying when he says players are returning for the Under-23s, but he fails to properly explain how far they are from full fitness and when he actually expects them to be vying for first-team action. The problem is when senior players take longer than expected to return is that fans then get frustrated and the blame is pinned on the players.