Clash of styles expected as Leeds United and Middlesbrough come to blows in the Championship

“Absolutely not,” Bielsa said, “and I’ll tell you why. It’s so hard to draw the style of a team and it takes so long. If you can change a team’s style it means the style is not strong enough. If you can change something easily it means it was not hard to build.”

Bielsa and Tony Pulis are as hardened as each other, men in their 60s with only two years between them, and the wide gulf between their respective philosophies is countered by a mutual commitment to their own way of thinking.

Bielsa is Bielsa and Pulis is Pulis, and anyone who has followed either coach knows the brand of football their names inspire. A 0-0 draw between Leeds and Middlesbrough in the first month of the season – the tightest of contests with so little in it – was a case of two cultures meeting in the middle.

The clubs were level at the top of the Championship on that August evening and 90 minutes of close, committed play failed to establish any superiority. The table has developed since then, taking Leeds seven points clear of Middlesbrough, but Pulis has Leeds at home this weekend and the benefit of a game in hand against Bristol City, to be staged at the Riverside in early April.

The oldest managers in the league have not quite shaken each other off yet.

Bielsa is battling to make his tactical approach work more effectively than it has since Christmas – to make far more of the possession which Leeds monopolise in almost every match – and Middlesbrough away is a test of it.

Boro gave up 63 per cent of possession at Elland Road in August and rank 19th in the Championship on the basis of their retention of it, above QPR, Millwall, Rotherham United, Bolton Wanderers and Birmingham City.

The comparative levels of in-game dominance tell in the goals Leeds and Boro have registered from open play: 37 for Leeds but 25 for Boro, whose low scoring is offset by the tightest defensive record in the division.

Bielsa, until recently, was sitting on a mass of very consistent results, with a handful of defeats and a concession rate of less than one a game.

Boro, under a manager in Pulis who won promotion from the Championship with Stoke City and was the club’s answer to the failed tenure of Garry Monk, have swung between periods of promise and periods of concern; a side capable of beating West Bromwich Albion away last weekend but losing to Newport County in the FA Cup’s fourth round on Tuesday.

Pulis pulled no punches about elimination at the hands of a side who have proven pedigree in the FA Cup – pedigree which Leeds experienced a year ago – but are mid-table in League Two.

“In the first half they completely and utterly ran over us,” said Pulis. “It was a bad night but I don’t want to take anything away from Newport.”

Leeds have been reliable at home and away all season, or at least until their results began to dip at the turn of the year, but Bielsa will see in Boro a definite difference between their travelling form and their results at the Riverside.

Boro have earned more wins away from home and are more prolific at other grounds than they are at their own. Their record on Teesside shows one league victory since the end of November, earned against an Ipswich Town team who are losing almost everywhere they go.

Bielsa will need the creative side of his squad to shine on Saturday, against a team who defend compactly and have kept their tally of goals conceded at home in single figures so far.

Pablo Hernandez was replaced at half-time during last weekend’s 3-1 defeat to Norwich City, the first time Bielsa’s answer to trouble has been to dispense with the inventive Spaniard, but Hernandez’s craft is necessary on an afternoon where Leeds can expect to control the ball.

Twenty-nine games into the season, Boro have been breached from open play just 14 times.

It is, before anything else, a game that Leeds cannot afford to lose, though Bielsa in his entire career has rarely been caught playing for a draw. Elsewhere, Sheffield United travel to Aston Villa on Friday night and West Brom go to Stoke City on Saturday before Norwich wrap up the weekend with an East Anglian derby against Ipswich.

From the perspective of every coach in the hunt, the league is threatening to swing dramatically, for better or worse.

Middlesbrough were one of the 11 clubs behind the collective letter to the EFL which demanded an inquiry into the ‘Spygate’ controversy, a subject which is set to be discussed at a monthly meeting of EFL clubs today, but when Pulis was asked if he thought United had sent scouts to watch their training sessions before the sides met in August, he replied: “I don’t care.”

Over seven months some mutual respect has developed between him and Bielsa.

The pair shared a beer in Bielsa’s office after the goalless stalemate in August and Pulis gave the Argentinian some insight into a division which is forcing Leeds to graft harder than ever.

Bielsa appreciated the advice and has discovered in the past month how, as Pulis told him, “it’s hard to keep regularity in the Championship.”

Both managers will feel the urge to see off the other this weekend.