What Marcelo Bielsa said on Leeds United style amid ‘we did pick up more injuries’ admission

Leeds United’s Head of Medicine and Performance Rob Price has admitted that the club picked up more injuries under Marcelo Bielsa’s guidance. Their former boss deployed high intensity pressing as his style of play during his time at Elland Road.

He guided the Whites to promotion to the Premier League. The 68-year-old now works as the national team coach of Uruguay. Price has revealed that Leeds’ medical department did their homework on Bielsa before he came and were expecting more issues. However, nothing too untoward happened in the end.

He has told the Official Leeds United Podcast: “When any manager comes in, we have a discussion about what the risk parameters look like, we also look at what they want to achieve. Now Marcelo’s style of play, the players had to be phenomenally fit.

“You saw our sprint distances, [they] were off the chart. So, to gain that, you have to really, really push the players into areas no other club does and nowhere else goes. We accepted that as a club.

“That was a discussion, Marcelo said ‘this is how I play, this is what I do.’ We accepted the risk, the club accepted the risk, there was never any disharmony within the club from the board to the medical department, to the science department, to Marcelo.

“We knew how we had to train to achieve how he wanted to play. Now to work at those thresholds, there’s a risk that you get more injuries. Again, we accepted that and were able to push through. What we generally did, he also ran with a really small squad, he didn’t want too many players available so you didn’t really have the opportunity to take players in or out to protect them.

“So what we focused on a lot with Marcelo, was okay we did pick up a few more injuries but not anything that’s out of this world. Again, coming back to let’s make sure we can get them back quickly and lets make sure when they come back, they’re fit to keep going and they’re ready to go, as in our rehab processes were of the same level and intensity as his training so they could just fit in and go from there.

Meanwhile, here is what Bielsa previously said about his approach and the style that he deployed at Leeds.

“Developing a way of playing and perfecting it is the principal task of the training sessions. The Premier League is a beautiful competition, although clearly I have experienced it for the first time in person without supporters in the stands, who are a major part of the league. But the lesson I’ve still learned is just how difficult every single game is. Whoever the opponent, and wherever they are in the league when we have faced them, it’s always been really difficult. Every game has been played at maximum intensity. This is a way of honouring the game, and it’s a sign of just how special the Premier League is.

“Football has three aspects that are very important: firstly, it is about having the right mentality which means the strength to compete while having the clarity to make decisions. Secondly, it is about having the physical qualities as the modern game demands a huge amount of players in order to impose those technical resources. The third aspect is the technical capacity of the players - the ability to manage all the solutions that you can imagine at this level and this refers to things that are executed with the feet. With this in mind, if a player isn’t rich technically, he will be easily found out.”