Marcelo Bielsa's handling of Leeds United's goalkeeping situation cannot be overlooked - Daniel Chapman

One of the dafter arguments made in favour of Frank Lampard Junior’s imaginary nomination for The Best FIFA Men’s Coach 2020, ahead of Marcelo Bielsa’s real one – and actually, remember, the whole argument is completely daft.

Anyway, King Dafty was Matt Law of The Telegraph, claiming among Lampard’s virtues that he got through a season with Kepa as his keeper.

If you’re blissfully unfamiliar with the unusual speech you’ll hear in west London, this might be as difficult to translate as when Law is lost in a grocer’s shop looking for jalapeños.

‘Nah peppahs in me peepahs guv’nah,’ is as hard to follow as, ‘Paw awl Fwank ’ad Kepah az iz keepah, me awl cockah’.

What he means is that last season Lampard was stricken with Kepa Arrizabalaga as his first-choice goalkeeper.

Chelsea paid a world-record £71m for Kepa but, despite this difficulty, Lampard still achieved a league finish one place lower than his predecessor.

Instead of the Europa League, he won nothing and, according to Law, this was among the season’s coaching miracles.

Law might have been joking slightly about Kepa – I hope so, anyway – but many truths are spoken in jest, and the first is that he doesn’t know anything about Bielsa’s work.

If you’re picking a subject for joking comparisons with Leeds, goalkeepers are not it.

Bailey Peacock-Farrell, Kiko Casilla and Illan Meslier are hardly two Lev Yashins and a Dino Zoff.

If FIFA’s criteria really add merit for coping with lousy goalkeepers, where was Thomas Christiansen’s award for taking Leeds top of the league before anyone even had a shot at Felix Wiedwald?

Because Bielsa worked in the Championship, Premier League correspondents have missed the process and only see the results.

How lucky, for Bielsa, to have England’s Kalvin Phillips waiting for him at Thorp Arch.

To have spent big money on prolific Pat Bamford. To get Jackie Harrison giftwrapped from Pep Guardiola.

Harrison didn’t cost anybody £71m.

It would probably surprise some people to learn that, 100 games into his Leeds career, we’ve never owned him beyond an often-renegotiated hire-purchase agreement with Manchester City, like a fridge the debt collectors keep taking away.

The second truth in Law’s gag is how oblivious the Premier League is to its own faults. Did Lampard improve Kepa, did he restore his confidence, repair his £71m of ability?

Or was Kepa as bad when he found him as when he ditched him, after Chelsea’s transfer ban was lifted, for a £22m replacement?

Being coach of the year is easy with a bin full of discarded players and an open chequebook.

This speaks to resources, and Jurgen Klopp’s current complaint that because the Premier League champions are being forced to miss their lunch they can hardly field a team.

By one estimate, Liverpool Football Club pay wages to more than 80 footballers but, if only 11 of them are good enough to play, what are the rest of them for?

Klopp might argue that picking reserves will weaken his team.

But he’ll also tell you he reveres Marcelo Bielsa who, when Jamal Blackman – on loan from goalkeeper-impoverished Chelsea – broke his leg and Peacock-Farrell was injured, did not put out a bat-signal for Andy Lonergan.

Leeds were spending time and money training goalkeepers in the Academy, so one of them, Will Huffer, played the match.

If you only like Bielsa’s ideas on a big budget, you don’t really like Bielsa’s ideas because ‘the nobility of the resources used’ is key to everything from a club’s economic health to the squad’s happiness.

Bielsa took a risk with Huffer, true, but only in the usual Bielsa sense of defying convention.

Goalkeeping’s specialisation has become so linked to experience they’re hardly trusted before they’re 30, while wingers get younger every day.

The convention is historically different at Leeds, though.

Gary Sprake became first choice at 17, John Lukic at 18, Paul Robinson aged 22. I’m going to gloss over Peacock-Farrell because his weekend was bad enough already.

Now Illan Meslier is first choice at 20, and a good test of Bielsa’s worth on that FIFA shortlist would be to ask any top-flight coach in the world if they’d choose to start the season with a goalkeeper stepping on the team bus looking like he’s smuggling cheap brandy on a school trip.

Three months ago they’d all have said no. Now, I suspect, Chelsea are preparing a bid.

Watching Meslier is as exciting as watching Raphinha at the moment; he makes saves good enough to celebrate, and both players were matchwinners at Goodison Park.

Bielsa won’t take credit for Meslier’s performances but, compared to his peers, he can take credit for his presence.

https://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/sport/football/leeds-united/gjanni-alioski-hails-leeds-uniteds-increased-belief-after-beautiful-football-everton-3052080https://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/sport/football/leeds-united/jack-harrisons-leeds-united-story-pictures-winger-reaches-whites-milestone-3052811https://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/sport/football/leeds-united/yorkshire-evening-post-launch-leeds-united-only-digital-subscription-ahead-premier-league-campaign-2967964

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Thank you Laura Collins