Marcelo Bielsa and Leeds United - brought together by the familiarity of unfinished business

Leeds go through managerial changes every summer and club football rarely pins Bielsa down for long. Both of them know what unfinished business feels like.

There is plenty of it at Elland Road and too much for Leeds or Bielsa to let it go.

Bielsa works his employers in negotiations, meticulous about the details of what he wants and what he needs, but talks about an extension to his contract were on course from the start.

Bielsa wanted another year, Leeds wanted him to commit to it and they were shaking hands by the close of play on Monday night. Bielsa stays and for the first time in almost a decade, Leeds have tangible continuity.

Change has been so constant in their long EFL existence that Bielsa becomes only the third United coach since relegation in 2004 to start two consecutive seasons and the club hope he will extend the trend of foreign managers mastering the Championship by winning promotion with the help of time to bed in: Slavisa Jokanovic, David Wagner and most recently, Daniel Farke.

The ground laid by Bielsa in finishing third at the first attempt could hardly be firmer. He was too effective, too particular, too popular and too driven for Leeds to think about a different way next season.

There were no contingencies at Elland Road in the event that Bielsa walked out, or no active thoughts about who could replace him, and Leeds drew talks to a successful close within two weeks of their defeat in the play-off semi-finals.

His decision leaves a clear and certain summer ahead, with only the pressure to deliver on Bielsa’s requirements.

His demands for transfers in his first window as head coach were modest and restrained and his attitude in the weeks ahead will be similar: no insistence on expensive or improbable signings but an expectation that Leeds will strengthen his squad where he needs, particularly on the flanks, and attack the loan market with far more success than they did 12 months ago.

Bielsa said after losing to Derby County in the play-offs that it was “very difficult to see these players play at the same level in another season” but he has since told the club that the point of that comment was to say that he could not have demanded any more of them.

He will attack the Championship for a second time with much the same spine and much the same mindset, conscious only that his squad’s understanding of his methods and tactics might allow him to drop the intensity of his training sessions slightly.

Training is the crux of Bielsa’s management, his way of pushing footballers to the edge, and discussions about an extension of his contract, an extension Leeds confirmed yesterday, included requests from him for more changes to Thorp Arch.

United have agreed to recommission the swimming pool (essentially out of action since Massimo Cellino mothballed it in 2014) and install a 1km running track around the facility’s perimeter.

They will install a remote control camera system to allow quicker, almost instantaneous, analysis of video footage while training is in progress and redesign the complex’s dressing rooms to mimic those at Elland Road.

It is evident from the recent Championship table, showing Leeds with their second-highest points tally ever in that league, that the club need marginal gains to bridge the gap from the play-offs to promotion.

Without Bielsa, and without a way of continuing his brand of coaching and football, Leeds could see that the work needed to better this season would be difficult and vast with new management, new thinking and a clean sweep through their backroom.

Bielsa refused to even discuss his position while the season was on-going but he and chief executive Angus Kinnear met 24 hours after it ‘ended in tears’ and began the process of activating the option to extend his tenure.

Sources in Argentina told the YEP at an early stage that Bielsa had already set his mind on staying.

Second seasons have never been easy for him and his last job at Lille did not see him through one but there is value to Bielsa in a year’s experience in the Championship, a league which has to be seen at close range for anyone to properly understand it.

Bielsa was exposed to its pitfalls, its limitations, its idiosyncrasies and the occasional self-importance of English football trying to tell outsiders how the game works. The Championship has failed to see him off.

On the contrary, he is coming for it again.