Danny Mills credited manager Marcelo Bielsa with Leeds’ success this season and compared his works to that of Tottenham boss Mauricio Pochettino.
The former Leeds defender stated how Pochettino sees Bielsa as the messiah in terms of coaching, an opinion he doesn’t disagree with, and pointed out that the Whites boss had done a similar job at Elland Road to what Pochettino has done at Spurs.
“Guardiola thinks he is the messiah, Pochettino thinks he is the messiah in terms of coaching and I’m not sure they’re wrong,” said Mills on Sky Sports News (Monday January 21st, 12:52).
“Leeds are top of the table for a reason, this is the same group of players, very very little investment, he has coached those players, worked those players and changed it, and this seems to be, Pochettino has done very very similar things at Tottenham, it’s going back to the old school way of coaching the players and improving what you had.”
Mills was then directly asked whether the recent spy scandal had played a part in Leeds’ loss to Stoke and responded by continuing to rave about Bielsa.
“Anyone can pull up this information, you can go on the internet now and find out all these formations, it’s whether you can be bothered to do it, this is not secret knowledge they are obtaining, it’s just reams and reams of games that have been watched, you still got to action those,” continued Mills.
“Pick out the good bits, the bad bits and put them into practice, your players then have to put them in to practice, he is an incredible character, incredibly intense and that’s why Leeds employee them and that’s why Leeds are doing so well.”
OPINION
Mills clearly is not on the fence regarding Leeds’ recent spy scandal as he claims all the information everyone seems to be outraged about Bielsa getting is freely available on the internet. Also the pundit clearly credits Bielsa as being the man and driving force behind Leeds’ sitting top of the Championship this season, and you’d have a hard time make a case for why Mills wrong. Since arriving at Elland Road, Bielsa has transformed Leeds’ fortunes and for the first time in what feels like ages, the club actually look on course to get out of the Championship and into the Premier League. While the spy scandal has put a damper on the mood surrounding Leeds’ excellent 2018/19 campaign, hopefully when everyone sees sense, they realise it’s all a storm in a teacup that it is no big deal. While the Whites suffered a defeat to Stoke City at the weekend, hopefully it’s a rare blip, and they’ll be backing to racking up three points before fans realise.