Defeat hits harder when you're so used to winning like Marcelo Bielsa's Leeds United - Daniel Chapman

There were times, in their last two seasons in the Championship, that Leeds United made winning look as natural as waking up.

Natural, but never easy. Fourteen years outside the Premier League proved that. But we cheerfully forgot that miserable grind when Marcelo Bielsa took charge.

Remember the five consecutive seasons when Leeds lost more games than they won? No? That’s one more reason to thank Marcelo.

Because in the last two seasons the team played as if all that was behind them forever. Garry Monk’s side restored some sense in 2016/17; they still lost as many as with Uwe Rösler and Steve Evans the year before, but eight draws turned into eight wins.

Then Thomas Christiansen and Paul Heckingbottom contrived to return a number of defeats equal to the combined efforts of Dave Hockaday, Darko Milanic and Neil Redfearn.

Our past felt inescapable, before Bielsa came along and history was rebooted.

This is not a column about remembering how bad our rut was, back when we put a brave face on ‘improving’ from 14th in 2012 to 13th in 2013, with exactly the same numbers of wins, draws and defeats.

I’m not trying to contrast the bad times with Saturday’s abject defeat to Brighton to make us feel better. There’s nothing to contrast: Saturday was also a bad time.

Instead it’s a column about a group of players who got so used to winning during the last two seasons that it almost became automatic, wondering how they’re coping now they can’t escape the mid-table humdrum we endured miserably for so long.

Defeat at Brighton was their ninth already in the league this season, as many as were lost in all of the title-winning campaign.

As they toiled and argued, the floodlights on the pitch deepening the shadows in the stands, the mud sucking at their heels, United’s players looked like they’d never won a game of football in their lives, and had no idea how anyone would go about it.

It’s been a fast, hard fall. One of the characteristics of Bielsa’s team in the Championship was winning even when they had to overturn common sense to do it.

Attacking Nottingham Forest with 10 players didn’t quite work in January 2019, but Leeds had a plausible chance where others didn’t, coming so soon after Kemar Roofe’s goals in stoppage time won impossible games against Aston Villa and Blackburn.

Such self-belief proved its worth last season. The stoppage-time winner at Luton; Jackie Harrison getting the only goal at Reading with moments left; Stuart Dallas and his last-minute goal against Preston, not a winner but a valuable equaliser.

That was three days before the 5-4 at Birmingham, when Leeds somehow found time and energy for the last word; a precursor to stoppage time in Swansea, when Luke Ayling brought the ball from his own six-yard box to help Pablo Hernandez win the league.

Those are the stories stats can’t tell, that get lost behind win percentages: 54 per cent in 2018/19, 61 per cent in 2019/20.

But there is a tale in the win rate after Valentine’s Day. After a draw at Brentford settled nerves, the team won 12 of their last 14: 86 per cent.

Then the Premier League happened and, within a couple of months, slashed that in half, to 39 per cent. Leeds have lost more than they’ve won. It’s little wonder they looked so unlike themselves against Brighton; they can’t be feeling like themselves, either.

Win seven, lose nine? This isn’t who they were in July.

Leeds look disorientated by the change, weary of who they’ve become. Time off might have helped in theory, but that’s like those days back at the start of the first lockdown, when people thought working from home would be refreshing.

No commuting would mean long lie-ins and more leisure time at night, right? Hmm. Has it been restful, or do you miss the person you were a year ago?

United’s players must miss being the team they were six months ago, but the harsh truth is that winning the Championship always meant the end. Their win percentage has inevitably fallen, by falling upwards, into the Premier League, where 61 per cent is the realm of the top four.

What Leeds are doing will, in the end, be absolutely fine; winning 39 per cent last season was good enough for seventh. But that doesn’t change the struggle to adjust from being a team able to win in any circumstances, to a team becoming familiar with beaten feelings.

In a profession focused on victory, the idea of merely coping is anathema. Most coaches get sacked for it.

Bielsa won’t be sacked, but he has to find a way to refresh his players before they play Newcastle. The challenge is to keep them in the mood for murderball when happiness is so much harder to find.

United don’t want rest. They want wins. Give them that, and they’ll play every day.