Leeds United's new partnership, Aleksandar Mitrovic and what the 22 goals shipped by Whites, West Brom and Fulham tell us

Leeds and Fulham account for 14 of those, seven apiece, while West Brom account for eight after their 5-2 beating at the hands of Everton on Saturday when down to 10 men.

In the case of Bielsa’s side, their newly apparent defensive frailty has added to both the entertainment value they have brought to the Premier League and the Argentine’s worries.

That they have scored as many as they’ve conceded may not come as much comfort to Bielsa, because he cannot yet explain their sudden ruthlessness in front of goal nor rely on it to forever compensate for issues at the other end.

There are, as he said, no tendencies after just two games and it is dangerous to try and draw conclusions that could explain why a team not accustomed to conceding often has given up so many goals already.

Bielsa believes that the lack of time Robin Koch has spent with Liam Cooper since arriving from SC Freiburg was not a factor in the ‘difficulties’ the centre-half pairing encountered against Fulham. Instead, the head coach simply referred to the skillset of Cottagers striker Aleksandar Mitrovic, whose physicality and finishing instinct make him every inch a Premier League striker.

He just happened to operate in the Championship last season where he was a horrible handful for defenders. Nothing has changed in that regard.

“The difficulties they had today I don’t think will improve if they play more together,” said Bielsa.

“It’s difficult to have the virtues needed to be able to cope with the number nine, with his characteristics. If anyone caused us danger it was him.”

But Leeds are going to come up against dangerous forwards of all shapes and sizes this season – they’ve already faced a world-class attack at Anfield and, on that occasion, Mo Salah walked away with the match ball – so it stands to reason that life is just going to be difficult, defensively, in the top flight.

West Brom, albeit with 10 men, knew all about it at Everton, coming up against Dominic Calvert-Lewin and James Rodriguez. The number nine was in the right place at the right time on three occasions to poach himself a hat-trick while Rodriguez showed that the best players can exploit the tiniest of gaps or make things happen in brilliant and unexpected ways.

What the Premier League new boys have encountered so far tells us that naivety is punished.

Leeds have been on both sides of the coin, brilliantly taking advantage of hesitancy in both the Liverpool and Fulham defences and conceding goals to both their own clumsiness and opposition brilliance.

Koch, so harshly adjudged to have handled in the box against Liverpool, had so much time to consider his options when Joe Bryan burst into the area that he weighed up and began a slide tackle and then at the last second but too late, pulled out. His punishment was a goal.

On Saturday, André-Frank Zambo Anguissa was able to take Kalvin Phillips out of the play with a nice touch and a strong shoulder, then took out both Liam Cooper and Stuart Dallas, who was marking two men, with a simple pass, allowing Bobby Decordova-Reid to administer the punishment with his finish. Leeds’ man-marking system makes them difficult to play against but, when a ball carrier gets free of his white-shirted shadow, another defender has to consider abandoning his man to intervene and, on occasion, it creates danger upon which very good players will pounce.

The system won’t change and Bielsa has made it clear he will not diminish Leeds’ attacking appetite, not against Liverpool and not against Fulham when 4-1 up. Their forward-thinking football brought them this far, after all.

Scott Parker bemoaned his own team’s defending as ‘too nice’ – a mentality issue, not something that could be fixed with training sessions, something players are responsible for fixing.

Don’t expect Bielsa to take that view. Mistakes can and will happen but, should goals continue to fly in at the wrong end and a tendency make itself apparent, his job is to find it and solve it.

“As the competition goes on I think we will be able to improve our defensive performance,” he said. “We will identify why these errors happened and prevent these difficulties from happening again.”