Why Marcelo Bielsa can relax ahead of Leeds United run-in and why he won't - Daniel Chapman

Marcelo Bielsa has always been ahead of his time, social distancing before anyone had put those words together and yelled them outside a garden centre.

None approach the bucket. Kemar Roofe tried once or twice for a handshake while being subbed off, but Bielsa defused all interactions, staring at the ground like a polite shopper feeling encroached in a supermarket queue.

But there’s more than just the popular image of him sternly seated. Moments of drama are Bielsa’s prompt to walk away, counting steps across his technical area like a cat through the night. If something is happening over here, Marcelo will contemplate it from over there.

Even with a friendly hand on Salim Lamrani’s shoulder, or two strong arms flung around Pat Bamford’s heaving chest, we see Bielsa as solitary, a man whose work and morals are his company.

Jesus had 12 disciples but the photographers of the day usually cropped them out and they do it too with Bielsa. His coaching staff are a great advert for depth of field, a frenetic background while Bielsa sits crisp and bucketed for his in-game portraits.

At issue is that frenzy around him. Elland Road’s home technical area is the most dynamic I’ve seen, and I’m sure Bielsa is now studying thermal imaging from Most Haunted’s coverage of the Bundesliga’s ghost games, as Yvette Fielding scans the touchlines for activity.

The new rules mean head coaches really are standing alone. Out front in the technical area, their new backdrops are bucket seats, with masked staff and substitutes scattered across what would be, in the John Charles Stand, the paddock.

It might not change things for everybody.

Last season, on the night Bielsa admitted to illicit scouting of Derby, I watched Frank Lampard coaching at Elland Road.

More truthfully, he was standing with his arms folded in his technical area, not speaking to the staff crammed in the dugout behind him or the players on the pitch in front. Lampard stood still and Derby lost, then he came back for the play-offs and stood still and Derby won.

That style won’t be affected behind closed doors at Chelsea: turn down the artificial crowd noise and you might hear, “Tammy, come on!” clap clap, or “Mounty, come on!” clap clap.

Compare that to the intense-debate club around the Peacocks’ bench. Staff in identical uniforms swarm and buzz, offering analysis, taking instructions, delivering translations (“Robbie Gotts, sit down!”).

Prompting, yelling, directing, rushing from the tunnel with a needle of experimental serum to tame Alioski, being waved away by Bielsa to run the tests again. Before lockdown, Bielsa was one booking away from a one-game suspension for being the one in charge of this high-wrought drama.

With stringent new rules and people’s health at stake, there will have to be a new approach to avoid instant discipline from the referee and widespread condemnation from the press: ‘Spygate coach threatens restart in coronavirus scandal’ and so on.

Bielsa has adapted already in his quest to politely respect the Victorian values underpinning English association football.

During his first game, at home to Stoke, fans at the front of the East Stand were surprised to be sitting alongside coaches with headsets, tactically instructing Bielsa’s furthest wing. That was soon stopped, as was switching the ball boys and girls from single to multi-ball in the middle of games.

About the persistent standing in his technical area, Bielsa said, “There is a rule, but we didn’t realise,” and that could be the summary of his time in the Championship so far. Including the rule that says Leeds United can’t succeed.

If his staff have to be cool and distant through the remaining nine games, it will mean a different test, but Bielsa should be ready for it.

He is so meticulous during the week, I wonder how much work on matchday is due to the same anxiety that drives him to illicit scouting of opponents’ training. “Why do I do it?” he asked. “Because I think I’m stupid.”

Near the end of United’s 1992 title win, Howard Wilkinson told his players, “That my worrying was finished. I had done all that work in pre-season to cover every angle ... I told them that provided they performed to their own standards to the end of the season, they could not fail.”

Bielsa is not stupid, and he’s done a lot of work. After two years of double sessions, what more can the head coach teach his players during the 810 minutes that remain?

Look at Ayling or Dallas or Harrison or Klich. Look at Roberts’ scoring at Hull. What do those players need to learn now?

He won’t, but this could be the time for Bielsa to relax. To sit his staff down, spread them out, and give them one English word.

He can sit on his bucket alone, listening to them shout, “Remember!”