Marcelo Bielsa on the 'massive physical effort' needed for Leeds United to beat Leicester City

The Foxes led early before Stuart Dallas equalised two minutes later. Leicester were dominant after the break thanks to a tactical change at the break and a new formation but were hit on the break by the Whites, Patrick Bamford scoring and then setting up Jack Harrison for the third.

Bielsa admitted it was a tough task for his men against quality opposition who went into the game unbeaten in nine, and the Foxes' 3-4-3 formation made it even harder, temporarily.

"It was a very, very difficult game," said Bielsa.

"In the first half it was how we expected. In the second half they changed the distribution of their players. It took us about 10 minutes to be able to adapt to this. After we started to recover the ball a bit better and we scored the second goal.

"After our second goal it was the most difficult period, we couldn't prevent them from creating goalscoring opportunities. We managed the end of the game well I think.

"It was a very difficult result for us to achieve. It's very difficult to prevent a rival like today's from building up passes and the only way we could be better than them was not to allow them to build up passes."

Bielsa valued the result, given the identity of the opposition, but didn't feel it was Leeds at their very best.

The Whites finished the game with a XI who all played in the Championship last season, however, and the result required huge physical sacrifice from them.

"The result is very important because the quality of the rival indicates it but to put an example, I think we played better against Aston Villa," he said.

"Clearly the level is totally different. In the Championship we played to be the best, at this level we have to make a massive effort to be able to keep up, to not let our opponents be superior to us. But when the club decided to build the squad for this campaign, all the players were conserved because we thought they could live up to the expectations of playing in this league.

"For us to be superior we have to make them worse and to try and manage to conserve our virtues. We had to try to do both things at the same time and in order to do this it requires a massive physical effort. We have to move a lot, making runs to be able to conserve the ball and we have to run a lot to press the opponent so they don't come close to our goal."

Bielsa was unable to give an update on the fitness of Rodrigo or Raphinha, who both limped off during the game, the former early on and the latter in the final stages, but he expects Rodrigo to be missing in midweek when Everton visit Elland Road.