Leeds United striker Patrick Bamford on Marcelo Bielsa, training drills and confident declaration upon playing behind closed doors

The Leeds United striker says personally speaking that he thrives on the “added incentive” of performing in front of thousands of supporters.

Come the resumption of the Championship season there will be none of them - not a fan in sight.

Yet under Marcelo Bielsa, Bamford says there will be no chance of United’s performance levels dropping due to playing behind closed doors.

After what will have been a 15-week break due to the country’s battle against coronavirus, Bamford and Leeds will finally resume their Championship campaign this weekend with Sunday’s clash at Cardiff City.

Even presented with a 12 noon kick off in south Wales, United would still have been guaranteed the usual backing from the club’s dedicated fans who would have made themselves heard loud and clear in the away end.

Bamford will miss it, in all four of United’s final four away games and in five more fixtures at Elland Road where Leeds will have to make do with playing in front of at least 15,000 ‘crowdies’ - life-size cut outs of fans placed inside the stands.

It will, though, says Bamford, be business as usual on the field for a Leeds side who under no circumstances even have room for dropping levels in training, let alone in a competitive game.

“Over the years there has been so many players that I have seen in training and thought wow this guy is something else,” said Bamford, speaking to 5 Live.

“Then you get to a game and he just kind of shrinks into his shell. “In terms of on a matchday, the crowd does help you get up for it and it just gives you that added incentive.

“But the way we train and the way that our manager’s got us geared towards, is - ‘if you don’t train like you play, then you’re not going to play anyway’.

“Every training session for us is literally scrutinised by him, and if you’re not on it for even a minute during the drill, then he lets you know about it.

“I think that the team as a whole, we’re kind of used to playing under the pressure in training, never mind in a game.”

Almost inevitably, United’s first game back will be screened live on Sky Sports with all eyes on the Championship’s restart which begins on Saturday with Fulham’s hosting of Brentford.

Fitness levels will naturally differ across the division but Bamford and Leeds are all set to return in excellent shape.

“I’ve never really struggled in terms of weight or putting on weight,” said Bamford.

“Because I am quite tall and lean anyway for some reason I can generally eat what I want and get away with it. But the regime even in lockdown was quite strict.

“We had to weigh ourselves every morning and take a picture of the scales and they actually sent us menus and stuff, just guidelines on nutrition and where to cut back depending on how hard the day is and stuff.

"It has been pretty well organised so I think most of the team has kept in good shape.”

Reflecting on the journey from entering lockdown to returning to training, Bamford explained: “In lockdown we had like a programme sent every night that we had to complete the next day and generally it was gym and go out and run.

“It was mainly straight line running but two or three times a week we would have like a change of direction programme.

“To start with I would just run around the hills and the roads around me and that was hard obviously not being used to running uphill.

“Then as we started moving into the shorter sharper sprints and stuff I just went down to the local cricket field and did it all there.

“Since then we have obviously been back in training, full contact whilst still social distancing.

“It’s weird going into the training ground and literally getting out of your car training and then jumping in your car straight away.

"It is still a bit strange but it is nice to be close to normality.

“It’s strange because most of our drills that we do at Leeds, even when we are allowed to do full contact, most of our drills are actually based around passing exercises and mannequin work so the only real full contact stuff is when we do what we call murderball which is really hard intense football sessions.

“It was actually something that you don’t realise but you miss it. I am not even a big tackler but to be able to get stuck in and have like a physical battle with someone, you don’t realise how much you miss it.”

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