Marcelo Bielsa hails important Leeds United win over Fulham, issues update on Pablo Hernandez

The Whites opened up a 10-point gap over the Cottagers, who now sit fourth behind Brentford, the Bees themselves eight points adrift of Bielsa's men.

It was a hard fought victory in light of Fulham's first half dominance.

Leeds took an early lead through Patrick Bamford but then found themselves falling deeper and deeper into a defensive shell as Fulham piled on the pressure and created half chances and penalty claims.

"In the first half it was difficult for us to recover the ball in the opponents' half and also when we were close to our box we lost it again quickly," said Bielsa.

"That made the first half better for them than for us."

Things changed in the second half. Bielsa introduced Pablo Hernandez and Gjanni Alioski at the break in place of Bamford and Helder Costa, and by the 71st minute the game was done and dusted.

Alioski got on the end of one flowing counter attack to make it 2-0 and Hernandez played a ball over the top for Jack Harrison to finish off another.

"In the second half it was better," said Bielsa.

"When Pablo came onto the pitch he co-ordinated well the movement with Tyler [Roberts] and on the other hand, when we recovered the ball in the second half we found Pablo and he gave us long options to our team with accurate passes.

"The co-ordination never depends on one player. Patrick made a big effort in the first half but we didn't press in the first half with good organisation."

Fulham's high defensive line and their attempts to push forward and find a way back into the game allowed Leeds to hit them on the break. Once the Whites had worked out their escape routes from defensive positions, they sped into space to devastating effect.

"When you have a lot of space behind the defensive line of the opponent it is easier to attack," said Bielsa.

"When the opponent is wide and we recover the ball in those conditions, after we had more space to attack and it is easier to go deep to find long options."

Hernandez, who missed last week's defeat at Cardiff with a hamstring injury, went off before the end of today's encounter but Bielsa, who also confirmed that Costa's withdrawal was not injury-enforced, said it was a precautionary swap.

"We had more substitution and we thought 45 minutes was enough for his comeback," he said.

"We managed this according to the necessity we had in the match."

The result struck a huge blow to Fulham's hopes of catching Leeds, who sit three points clear at the top of the Championship with seven games remaining.

And the club's return to action at Elland Road, without fans, was the first game at the stadium since legends Norman Hunter and Trevor Cherry passed away, which gave the occasion extra sentiment.

"The win was necessary for us, very important," said Bielsa.

"And there are all the feelings [regarding the loss of legends Norman Hunter and Trevor Cherry] we had to consider, that were part of the match as well."

But the Argentine would say little about the result's rammifications for the promotion hunt.

"In every match we are going to talk about numeric modification in the table," he added.

"It is very difficult to interpret any circumstance as a tendency."