Marcelo Bielsa in one of three groups when it comes to Kiko Casilla's Leeds United future

The Spanish goalkeeper is considered a blindspot, for Bielsa, by a section of the club's fanbase.

It's a fanbase that adores Bielsa and few in it would come up with many other issues they feel he overlooks.

His footballing philosophy is met with incredulous punditry and accusations of naivety but receives almost overwhelming approval from the people who really matter to him and to Leeds. His decision to speak through a translator is routinely dragged out as a stick to beat him with by certain elements of the media and Whites fans are as quick to discard it as they are the term 'burnout.'

Yet the subject of Casilla is a sticking point, a source of friction that rubs both Bielsa and many supporters the wrong way.

It's complicated.

You have Group A - fans who cannot forgive Casilla's footballing errors, some of which were calamitous and high profile. You also have Group B, who cannot forgive the events of last season, when Casilla was banned for eight games having been found guilty of using racist language against Charlton, by an independent commission. Some members of Group A disagree entirely with the thinking of Group B and some fans belong to both groups.

When League Two Crawley Town stuck three goals past him last Sunday, at least two of which were disappointing from a goalkeeper's perspective, the two groups were united in their belief that time is up for a player who joined the club on a £35,000-a-week salary that will have risen thanks to promotion.

Other supporters, along with Bielsa, are in a third group, Group C if you will. So too, he says, are Casilla's fellow players at Leeds United.

Bielsa can forgive Casilla for his footballing errors - last season after the keeper let a pass roll under his foot, leading to a goal at Brentford, the head coach was bullish in support of Casilla and insisted the team still had full faith on their number one.

When it comes to the other matter, the eight-game ban handed out by the FA over a racism charge, to which Casilla has always maintained innocence, Bielsa has refused to abandon the former Real Madrid man.

Illan Meslier stepped in and took the starting position between the posts and has kept it, but Bielsa was of no mind to move Casilla on in the summer and when the FA Cup third round tie rolled around, he had no issue whatsoever in playing Casilla.

When asked, today, if Casilla's performance had led him to consider teenager Elia Caprile as backup for Meslier, Bielsa could not have been clearer, with his strongest and most comprehensive defence of the 34-year-old to date.

"No, I fully trust in Kiko," he began.

"And I will do the utmost possible to help him."

The rub, for Bielsa, is that Casilla's critics now ignore what will have been lauded at the time of his signing - his 'pedigree' - along with his contribution to the Whites' escape from the Championship, and they give no consideration to the impact the FA ban had on the Leeds man. Bielsa does not ignore his past achievements as a Real Madrid player and cannot ignore what Casilla has been through on a personal level.

"I think that the treatment that Kiko has suffered, it ignores the fact that he is a player that played 40 games for Real Madrid," said Bielsa.

"And apart from whether his performances were good or bad, they forget all the things that he has done to help the team to get promoted. And people also don't consider how he is being treated publicly given the situation that he had to go through when he was suspended for eight games and what he had to go through in this period. I believe in him, his team-mates, believe in him, and we are close to him because we value him as a person and as a footballer.

"We accept what people think about him, media or people, but we know his past, we know his conditions and we care about him a lot as a human being."

There is simply no argument, in Bielsa's mind, to promote a 19-year-old with no first team experience above a player with close to 400 senior appearances. What's more, he doesn't believe that is a legitimate suggestion. He, not for the first time, saw 'implied meaning' in a question, and felt it had nothing to do with Caprile and everything to do with further humiliation of Casilla.

"The same treatment that was given to Casilla is similar to the treatment of questions that have an implied meaning," he said.

"A player that’s serious, that has trained, that is experienced like Casilla. A player like Casilla, who has had 40 games for Real Madrid, one of the biggest clubs in the world, and whether he can be replaced by someone who has never had one minute in the first team.

"What this question is looking for is to merely humiliate Casilla, because it really has nothing to do with Caprile. But of course this is part of football."

Bielsa's frustration is that football's habit of discarding players after mistakes, at least in the discussion surrounding a team if not in the picking of a team, will simply swap one name for another depending on who made the latest error.

"One day Meslier, who is 20 years old, gives a bad pass and it results in a goal and the question is whether it was a good idea to replace this 20-year-old and put an experienced player in like Casilla, and in the next day the question is if a 19-year-old who hasn't had any minutes is going to be in goal because I might have lost confidence in Casilla," he finished.

His words might comfort the perennially under-fire Casilla but they are not likely to coax many from Groups A or B into C. Bielsa says he accepts what the media or people say about the goalkeeper, but is yet to recognise publicly that for some, the racism charge was something from which there can be no return. For them, zero tolerance on racism is non-negotiable. Those people may accept that Bielsa takes an alternative view, but are never going to be won over by his argument.

What they see when they look at Casilla is a player who was found guilty of using racist language, a player whose entire defence was built on a spotless history, character references and an apparent ignorance of the n-word he was accused of uttering. What Bielsa sees is a human being with whom he has a personal relationship, a player in his managerial care to whom he owes loyalty and support.

When the two groups look at Casilla they see a different thing and that may always be the case. It will simply remain an issue, maybe the issue, on which Bielsa and many of his adoring public do not see eye to eye.