Problems and praise for Marcelo Bielsa and Pep Guardiola as Leeds United take on Manchester City

The Whites have no fresh injury concerns but the loan agreement with City for Jack Harrison means he sits it out.

City will have to do without Gabriel Jesus and Sergio Aguero, while others remain doubtful.

But in Marcelo Bielsa and Pep Guardiola, these two old English clubs boast managers who see solutions others would not.

Resolving their team selection issues will come easily enough – Bielsa’s plan is to bring Gjanni Alioski in for Harrison because he’s ‘able to do as well or better’ on the left and he expects Guardiola to resolve the question of who to play up front without too much trouble – but once it gets going the game itself will throw up situations, both expected and unexpected, that necessitate a quick fix.

Leeds have given all of their first three Premier League opponents more than they could handle, offensively and there’s little reason to believe a team built and conditioned to attack won’t fashion a few chances against a City team who can be susceptible to counter attacks.

The problems City could give their hosts are numerous and nightmarish, so Leeds’ approach and the solutions Bielsa proposes will be fascinating. How will they stop Kevin De Bruyne, or at least how will they try to stop him, for example.

Don’t expect too much to change when it comes to the Whites’ set-up, however.

“We will try to play the same way we always do, we wouldn’t know how to do it any other way,” said Bielsa, previewing the game on Thursday.

Questions about Guardiola, his success and their relationship were as inevitable as some of Bielsa’s answers.

Of course he doesn’t consider himself a mentor to Guardiola, of course he believes that the City manager would ‘without doubt’ succeed in the Championship without the resources he has enjoyed during his career so far and of course he was never going to reveal exactly what was said during their 2006 get together on Bielsa’s ranch.

Bielsa couldn’t remember what he had told Guardiola about management, simply saying he talked football with a man who came across as one who ‘really thought about football.’

Their three battles in Spain left Bielsa with memories of frustration, his Athletic Bilbao side struggling to impose themselves against Barca.

“Anyone who faced Barcelona in those four years would probably give you the same answer, there are many people of the opinion that it was the best team in the history of football,” he said.

What Guardiola has done in the 14 years since their meeting at Máximo Paz has come because he has, in Bielsa’s mind, qualities that set him apart.

The speed at which Guardiola problem solves is one of those and something Bielsa admires.

“First of all he is imaginative,” said the Argentine of the Spaniard before their first encounter on English soil.

“He is able to instantly create solutions to problems that he imagines.”

The praise did not stop there. Bielsa went on to laud Guardiola’s outlook on football and the fact that he can teach it in such a way that players put it into action on a pitch, successfully.

“The other thing that distinguishes him as a coach is that what he proposes he is able to implement them,” said Bielsa.

“When you praise someone I think it’s very important to argue why because if not it’s mere sympathy rather than actual praise.

“The majority of coaches, we imagine football in an obedient manner, Guardiola imagines football in a free way. To imagine football this way doesn’t mean the footballers are going to act in that way. To propose a solution to the game, to be in line with what the player can do and that they don’t need a lot of time to incorporate it. For me this is one of the biggest praises you can give a coach.

“I don’t know too many people in my humble opinion who deserve this type of praise.”

Everyone in Leeds knows at least one. Nine years ago, Guardiola bestowed a similar compliment to that very man.

“A coach who gets so little time to make his people believe in his way of seeing the game, they follow him so faithfully,” he said, during a flowing tribute to Bielsa’s insistence on attack.

Most of the words Bielsa used to describe Guardiola are things that could be said of him and enough arguments can be made to ensure it is praise and not sympathy we’re dealing in.

He too finds solutions – putting Pascal Struijk in front of the back line to resolve the problematic absence of Kalvin Phillips during a game of huge tension, stopping Barry Douglas from running on as a sub at Swansea because the home team’s own change was going to present aerial challenges that Gaetano Berardi would better suit, not to mention all the games he changed with half-time intervention and swaps.

Bielsa took next to no time to convince a mid-table team that there was another, superior way to play and they used it to very quickly take the Championship by storm. It’s turning heads in the Premier League now, too.

He might not conjure up ‘free’ football in his mind, but his regimented style has unlocked the Championship cage that held Leeds United for far too long and presented them with the kind of problems they craved for 16 years. I don’t know too many who deserve this type of praise.