Fun and games as Marcelo Bielsa's Leeds United leave 'blueprint' side Leicester City trailing in their wake - Graham Smyth's Verdict

It ended with the sight of Brendan Rodgers' team, players who had demolished Leeds on the counter attack at Elland Road earlier in the season, trailing in the wake of Marcelo Bielsa's white-shirted men for three quick attacks that were finished ruthlessly.

Andrea Radrizzani is right when he says Leeds should follow the path Leicester have taken to get to where they are. He wants the Whites to be able to compete, financially, on a level playing field with clubs at the top end of the Premier League and he wants to get there via sensible, sustainable means.

Right now it's just not possible for Leeds to go pound for pound sterling with established top flight clubs.

For a newly promoted club the gulf to the top six is vast. But the beauty of football is that revenue streams mean very little if your 11 players don't run faster, harder and smarter than the other team's 11 players for 90 minutes.

Before the game Marcelo Bielsa talked about the little guy getting close to the big boys by taking the paths less travelled by.

"It's very difficult to construct a team quickly and very difficult to buy the best players, but there are alternate paths to create these players yourself, to make these players loyal so they would rather stay where they are than go elsewhere," he said.

"And another fundamental aspect is to find players who are not yet stars and develop them."

Thanks to worrying injuries to both Rodrigo and Raphinha, the entire XI who finished the game for Leeds on Sunday played in the Championship last season. But the time might just have arrived to stop considering them Championship players.

Kalvin Phillips could be playing in his second season of Premier League football, yet opted to stay at Elland Road in the summer of 2019, believing he could earn the right to call himself a top flight player the hard way with his boyhood club instead of accepting the big money move on the table from Aston Villa.

Against Leicester, in front of his England manager Gareth Southgate, Phillips was a hulking menace in any 50:50 tackles that came his way. This wasn't a game in which he could give Leeds control, but he could give them physicality against Leicester's high quality midfield.

One former EFL veteran recalls instructions to target Luke Ayling in team talks before League One games.

Against Leicester, in the Premier League, he was defensively sound and offensively effective. He was an all-action nuisance whose interception led to the first goal and his knack for inviting contact to relieve pressure brought a number of timely free-kicks.

Stuart Dallas, scorer of that first goal, had never played higher than the Championship and maybe never would have, had it not been for Bielsa's arrival at Leeds. Yet all season long he has looked right at home at this level and at the King Power Stadium he was as good as any player on the park.

And Patrick Bamford, the man many wanted dropped last season due to his wastefulness in the Championship, is a completely different animal in the Premier League.

He left the pitch with a slight limp, two assists and a goal of the highest quality to add to the 10 he already had this season.

These players are doing a better job than anyone thought possible of bridging the gulf between Leeds and clubs with far bigger wallets. Anyone except for Bielsa and his staff, perhaps.

Even Radrizzani would surely not have dared dream of 29 points from 20 games and 12th place, with a 15-point buffer between them and a relegation zone containing the other two promoted clubs.

"When the club decided to build the squad for this campaign, all the players were kept because we thought they could live up to the expectations of playing in this league," said Bielsa after Sunday's win.

The key to meeting Premier League demands for Leeds is movement. Ninety-plus minutes of lung-bursting movements, or in Bielsa's words - 'a massive physical effort.'

Leeds were making a huge effort to disrupt Leicester early on, Dallas, Rodrigo and Patrick Bamford all involved in early turnovers, but Premier League quality means near constant danger.

Liam Cooper's switch towards the right flank was intercepted in the Leicester half, Harvey Barnes ran right down the middle through acres of space, exchanged passes with Maddison and stroked the ball past Illan Meslier.

Leeds' response was perfect and immediate. It was all about movement.

Ayling sprang forward to intecept a pass, hared down the right and played the ball into the feet of Bamford, who turned and saw Dallas running in behind the defence. The pass was good, the finish was even better and it was 1-1.

Then began the fun and games.

Leicester had a goal chalked off for offside as they waltzed through the Leeds defence, Leeds met the same fate when Bamford's header was clawed out of the net by Kasper Schmeichel and the offside Mateusz Klich hooked in the rebound.

Schmeichel had already saved well from Jack Harrison's stinging first time volley when he palmed out Raphinha's effort after another quick, slick Leeds move.

At the other end Illan Meslier kept out Marc Albrighton and Ayoze Perez. It was a great spectacle, the half-time break feeling like a much needed intake of breath.

Rodgers admitted later that the Whites' runs beyond his defenders had caused issues he sought to rectify with a half-time change, switching to a 3-4-3 formation that Leeds took time to get their heads around.

Liam Cooper and Pascal Struijk were defending well but doing a lot of it as Leicester shots began to rain in.

The visitors had to work even harder to take play into the home half of the pitch and looked less capable of cutting open the three-man backline.

But when Struijk beat Perez to the ball in midfield and fed Raphinha, he unlocked them with a first-time pass of real quality and Bamford did the rest, allowing the ball to run onto his left foot and unleashing a missile that he guided into the far, top corner.

Leicester didn't take kindly to going behind to these johnny-come-latelys they'd handled so easily at Elland Road and threw everything at Leeds, creating a raft of chances but somehow not finding the net.

Leeds had no control but they had fight and contested every ball. And with Leicester piling forward, they had the opportunity to counter.

A Foxes free-kick was cleared, Dallas wanted the ball more than Nampalys Mendy, poked it down the line to Mateusz Klich and he moved it on to Bamford who had a clean run on goal from halfway. Jonny Evans tried in vain to get back, Bamford reached the area and simply slid the ball across to Harrison who found the empty net and Leicester were undone, just like Leeds had been in November.

"In the Championship we played to be the best," said Bielsa.

"At this level we have to make a massive effort to be able to keep up, to not let our opponents be superior to us."

Leeds are keeping up just fine.