Leeds United and Marcelo Bielsa not looking for excuses which would be justified with pitch in the bin - Daniel Chapman

“I don’t want to link the performance or the defeat to the state of the pitch,” said Marcelo Bielsa, in the aftermath of United’s loss to Brighton.

Meanwhile, just off-Zoom from his press call, tractors were revved and pitchforks sharpened, and Elland Road’s groundstaff began tearing lustily into what little grass the winter rains had left in Beeston’s mud.

A hundred miles away, in warmer climes near the M1 at Leicester, gentle breeders of turf were tenderly stroking a lush expanse of freshly grown grass.

Kneeling, they spoke to it in undertones, not of Tottenham anymore, but of Leeds, as if whispering to a puppy about its new home.

You’ll like it there, but you’ll need a little raincoat.

On Instagram, Mateusz Klich reposted a photo of Elland Road’s torn up old turf with a high-10 emoji of pleasure.

The club’s official website made an announcement.

Fans locked into Gardeners’ Question Time on Radio 4, anxious to learn all things lawn, ready for online debates.

“For us, as a club, it’s a great chance for us,” Jackie Harrison told BBC Leeds, almost as if he was talking about a cup final, until we remembered, oh yeah, Crawley, and every other year, and then he took a breath, and went on, “...to get a new pitch, and we’re all excited about that as players and as a club as well.”

But behind that thrill was the inevitable note of caution.

“It’s always the same for both sides,” he insisted. “If it’s a good pitch or a bad pitch, it’s always the same for both sides.”

You must not, whatever you do, blame the pitch, or use the pitch as an excuse, or incriminate the pitch, no matter what.

But you can spend £300,000 ripping the whole thing out, chucking it into a skip and trying again with a different surface, all while claiming it was never the problem.

No excuses! Not here! Just an everyday turf bonfire!

That’s football, though, with its very complicated relationship to notions of blame.

An illustration of one end of the spectrum comes this week from Frank Lampard Junior, shouting into a full-length mirror: “It’s not you, it’s them!”

Bielsa takes a different approach, blaming himself for everything from defeats to FA fines.

But sometimes that can leave a vacuum that’s typical of the sport.

After losing, we can’t blame the pitch, we can’t blame individuals, we can’t put it down to mistakes, the team played well enough to win, so-and-so’s suspension wasn’t the difference, VAR went against us but we can’t use that as an excuse.

Okay, fine. So what did happen?

Against Brighton, we all saw the pitch was a factor, but football doesn’t have a way of explaining that properly.

It’s too bound up by cliches about blame and excuses.

The pitch was one reason why it was difficult for Leeds to play their best.

But say that out loud and you’re accused of ‘making excuses’, one of the innumerable sins found in football’s obscure moral code.

Everything in a match happens for a reason but we can’t talk about reasons without calling them excuses.

The two things should be separate: to claim isn’t always to blame.

Football has evolved to the point where, for example, ex-players can speak about mental health problems that affected their careers.

But only in long retrospect, and only with a high threshold.

The game isn’t ready for the player who explains they missed an easy chance because they were miserable today.

That’s unprofessional, and footballers are paid too much to use their feelings as an excuse.

There will be no sympathy, until it’s told on a podcast 10 years later.

This of all times could be the season to change that. How does player X explain his performance today?

Well, we’re nearly a year into a pandemic and, after a hitch with childcare, the morning’s pre-game Zoom call with the parents back home made it hard to concentrate on the match.

By now, we probably all know those feelings. But we wouldn’t want a footballer to use them as an excuse.

But heck, why not? Nothing happens without a reason and not every reason is an excuse. Leeds could have beaten Brighton on that lousy bog, true.

But the pitch was one of the reasons why they didn’t and now it’s proving it, silently, in the bin.

There shouldn’t be any shame but, if we can’t even say out loud that the pitch was a problem, we’ll never allow anything else.

Football’s dive into stats and analysis has taken us as far as identifying patterns in numbers but no further into understanding causes.

The game is all effect, as if nothing can affect it.

Players might like to tell the story behind their expected goals average dropping but, unless they’re confessing it to a priest, they’re only giving away a weakness in the press.

And we can’t have that.

So on they go, granite jawed and brave, hiding hearts of glass.

Or grass, whichever.

https://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/sport/football/leeds-united/steve-bruce-confirms-triple-newcastle-united-blow-leeds-united-clash-and-provides-allan-saint-maximin-fitness-update-3111840

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Thank you Laura Collins