Leeds United journalist Phil Hay has been sharing his thoughts on how Marcelo Bielsa’s side will have been affected by the extended break from football and how the Argentine manager will utilise the new rules regarding substitutions.
This comes after Hay recently made an appearance on The Totally Football League Show podcast to discuss everything going on at the Yorkshire club at the moment.
Hay was asked about the latest rule that will allow teams to use up to five substitutions in a match when the current Championship season returns, and whether or not Bielsa will utilise this latest change.
In response, Hay said: “[Bielsa’s] preferred strategy is to leave the same XI on the pitch for as long as he can. He’s not somebody who particularly likes to mix it up and I’d be very surprised if we saw a single game where he was using five substitutions.
“What you see with Bielsa is that his substitutions tend to be very, very forthright. So rather than being in a rut of just using three players through the back end of the game, and giving the odd academy player a debut off the bench, he makes multiple substitutions at half time when games are going wrong, or when things aren’t quite right, or when he’s not really happy with the play.
“He will, there and then, drag a player out, throw a player on, and it’s an unusual system and an unusual method of management which does generally work for him.
“But I think generally, in terms of fitness levels, it should help them – they should be in a good place. And while I think they would all much rather have played on in March, because they clearly had a lot of impetus behind them, there doesn’t seem to be a feeling that they’ve been any way set back by this.”
Would you like to see Bielsa make more substitutions?
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TIF Thoughts…
With this new rule on substitutions, it will be interesting to see if Bielsa takes full advantage of it or not and makes numerous changes to his team during Leeds’ upcoming Championship fixtures.