Marcelo Bielsa doesn’t rant and rave at half-time but spends the full 15 minutes analysing the game, according to Leeds midfielder Jamie Shackleton.
His side has been labelled a second-half side this season after they’ve turned round a number of games after the interval, following poor starts.
On the latest episode of the Talking Shutt podcast Shackleton was asked about this by the host who said, “I’ve seen some pundits call us a second-half team. Does he [Bielsa] rant and rave at half-time?”
“It’s not really a rave, he’s calm,” said Shackleton.
“He tells you what’s not going right, why it’s not going right and what we need to do in the second-half to put it right. More often than not he’s right and if the game’s not going how we thought it would before the game, if that’s the shape or the way we’re playing generally, he’ll spend the whole 15 minutes sorting it out.”
OPINION
We can’t imagine Marcelo Bielsa ranting and raving, or delivering the Alex Ferguson hairdryer treatment, so we’re happy to have this confirmed by Shackleton. Bielsa is a football obsessive and a deep analyst of the game, and we can imagine that he often wishes that he had more than 15 minutes to talk to his Leeds players. Whatever he does seems to work though – Leeds have turned round some game spectacularly this season, none more so than the Aston Villa game where they were losing 2-0 and went on to win 3-2. Bielsa has obviously got the full respect of his players, who have all shown a huge improvement over last season, but he’s now facing the biggest challenge of the season. His Leeds side have lost four and won just two of the last seven league games and they desperately need a win to steady the ship against Swansea tomorrow night. Three points against Swansea would be extra sweet for the fans too, who haven’t forgiven the Welsh side for pulling the plug at the last minute when it looked like Leeds were set to sign winger Daniel James on deadline day in January.