Pundits' style hysteria made to look silly in Leeds United's grim win over Burnley - Graham Smyth's Verdict

She and a younger woman had just laid flowers on a stone at Centenary Square in a private moment of remembrance for a loved one. There were other wreaths and bouquets, Leeds fans having made pilgrimages to the stadium in long-held and, inevitably given the toll of 2020's pandemic, brand new festive traditions.

In any year Christmas is a time for keeping the main thing the main thing and focusing on family, but this year more than ever the noise and the frippery hasn't so much been stripped away from us but ripped away.

It's the same for Leeds United and Marcelo Bielsa. Things that just don't matter, like the rage of pundits, infuriated and stunned by the lack of change in the playing style of a head coach who doesn't ever change his style, have been cast in their natural, inconsequential light.

The main thing for Leeds, said chief executive Angus Kinnear in his programme notes for the game against Burnley, was the 'footballing DNA' Bielsa had created throughout the club, a way of playing that makes Leeds the protagonists in every game, the very reason they hired the Argentine.

Bielsa's way has become the Leeds way, something for Whites to be proud of after years of wandering the wilderness without top flight status or a real identity.

Even after a chastening beating at the hands of Manchester United, when their Bielsa-given identity was challenged by both the scoreline and the media reaction, there was no wholescale meltdown. Instead there was defiance. Yes, Leeds fans were angry and critical, but they were not about to be told why they should be angry or what and who they should criticise.

Quite why any neutral pundit would want Bielsa to change, when Leeds games throw up enough entertainment and incident to keep them talking for days, is a better question than 'why is there no plan B?' Do we really want or need another team retreating behind a low block and going route one? Can we not just accept variety as a good thing?

The analysis of the Old Trafford game provoked a lengthy reaction from Bielsa in a pre-game press conference intended to preview a Burnley game that pitted contrasting styles against one another.

It was the foreign head coach who refuses to compromise taking on the uncompromising Englishman.

Sean Dyche was schooled in the importance of the result at Chesterfield by John Duncan, who prioritised a sound, organised defence and has remained a mentor for his former centre-half.

"He’s been very influential on what I think is correct and how football should be done," said the Burnley boss of his former Spireites manager.

“First of all, how you should win. He was a winner. Development at youth level is one thing but at first-team level you have to win - or at least win enough or else you are out."

Bielsa, like Dyche, wants to win. He wants to win with style but as he said after the game, style is just a means to the end.

Yet for all the talk and the focus since Old Trafford on style, Leeds won this game with a disputed penalty that came from a long ball and some good old fashioned backs-to-the-wall defending.

Bielsa doesn't like making predictions about how games are going to go because football has a way of making any attempt at prophecy look very silly indeed.

And as Burnley's relentless high press forced Leeds to pump the ball clear in desperate search of respite, in a manner most unfamiliar, the obsession with Leeds' attacking nature all seemed a bit empty and irrelevant.

The thought that Leeds' performance in a single game against Manchester United should be held up as an example of how the rest of the season would go, were Bielsa not to change his ways, seemed largely ludicrous as a game against Burnley unfolded in such an unexpected way. Shading possession by just two per cent against Burnley was not on anyone's accumulator.

The main thing, as Kalvin Phillips strained to get a toe or the top of his head to yet another loose ball or dangerous cross and as Burnley keeper Nick Pope had to be picked up in the area for a Clarets corner, was winning the game.

How it ended, with Burnley in control and on the front foot, was a far cry from the way it began.

The visitors had gone long three times, fruitlessly, before Leeds did it to perfection in the fourth minute, Luke Ayling's ball over the top putting Patrick Bamford in a one-against-one duel against Pope.

The goalkeeper flew into the challenge, got the ball, the man and a whistle from referee Rob Jones, who deemed it a foul.

Bamford took the spot-kick himself, thumped it uncompromisingly into the top right-hand corner and gave Leeds the dream start.

If the penalty award was a little fortuitous, Leeds were thanking their lucky stars when Illan Meslier came to collect a free-kick, clattered into Ben Mee and dropped the ball for Ashley Barnes to send into the unguarded net. Jones and his whistle turned Burnley frustration to exasperation. He somehow felt Meslier, who initiated contact with Barnes, had been fouled and blew up for a free-kick to Leeds before the ball hit the net.

Leeds had plenty of possession and intent but needed a helping hand from the Burnley defence to create chances for Raphinha and Jack Harrison, who were denied by a Pope save and an inadvertent Bamford block.

Burnley's danger came chiefly from set-pieces and crosses, although with no real width to their play, the latter were hard to come by. One from Ashley Westwood should have ended up in the back of the net when Meslier got nowhere near it and Chris Wood outjumped Ayling but headed over.

It wasn't sparkling fare in the first half. Leeds had issues playing out from the back, Burnley had no great desire to commit men forward and the pitch cut up badly, hindering both.

What followed in the second half was a different story and a gripping one, albeit not a fun one. It was a grim thriller.

Leeds were sluggish from the off, careless passing and control giving Burnley a platform to attack from inside the home half of the pitch.

A blocked Raphinha shot and an off-target one from Bamford aside, they had no control.

Even Pablo Hernandez, on for a fading Rodrigo, looked rushed in possession, Burnley pressing with intensity and stopping the hosts at source.

When the hosts did escape, through a Gjanni Alioski overhead clearance, Hernandez ran from box to box to force a fine save from Pope. The game was on a knife-edge, Leeds just one moment away from killing it and one away from disaster.

There was concern and chaos as Burnley turned ball after ball into the area, winning corners and free-kicks that spelled danger and brought Pope to the opposite end of the pitch. There was also Phillips, always there when needed, and Meslier, who stood up to the challenge despite his earlier discomfort.

And at the end of it all there was a win, which is all that really mattered. And Leeds are three points closer to staying up, which is all that really matters.