...jatkuu...
Such an impressive performance in their first season back among the elite for 16 years means those few thousand fans fortunate enough to get a golden ticket on Sunday will be able to give their side a richly deserved salute.
Bielsa, too, will undoubtedly feel the love as supporters wait to hear whether the Argentinian is staying on or not next season. The smart money says “yes” with
The Athletic understanding Bielsa has recently sounded out members of his backroom staff as to whether they can commit for another 12 months in England.
Providing he stays, the challenge facing the former Argentina and Chile national team coach will be how to improve on this hugely impressive first season back.
Howard Wilkinson, still the last Englishman to lift the league title in this country, knows a thing or two about the challenges Bielsa will be facing after encountering a similar scenario exactly 30 summers ago.
Back then, United’s first campaign back among the elite for eight years had ended in an even more impressive fourth-place finish. Wilkinson’s task was to further hone that energy and excitement to keep United moving forward, something he did magnificently that the league title was back residing at Elland Road the following May.
Football has changed a lot since those days, a point underlined by how three of the four best performing newly-promoted sides in the Premier League era date back to the opening three seasons of the fledgeling competition.
But Bielsa, like Wilkinson back in those heady days when Leeds burst out of the Second Division, is a manager committed to driving his team forwards.
“A number of things need to be done to keep a club progressing after one decent year in the top division,” Wilkinson, now 77, tells
The Athletic. “Yes, there is momentum after, if you like, having gone on to bigger and better things. As opposed to what can happen if you struggle in that first season up.
“That is a big confidence builder and it remains with you. However, the end of that first season is a time when you have to assess what has happened and ask what can be done better looking forwards.
“It is a very important time. At Leeds all those years ago, we asked ourselves a series of questions. How many of those youngsters that are starting to look as if they can be players can be involved next time around?
“What had we learned last season? What surprised us about last season? Both in a negative way and a positive. And where in particular do we think there has to be major improvement? Is it one area or a couple of areas?
“For Leeds now, this is an opportunity to reassess from a nice position because that reassessment is being done on the basis you coped.”
Like Bielsa in the upcoming close season, the big priority for Wilkinson 30 years ago was finding a quality left-back suited to the fast-paced style espoused by the manager. Tony Dorigo duly arrived from Chelsea for £1.3 million and became such a big part of the title success he was voted fans’ player of the year.
Wilkinson (bottom row, far left) oversaw great success, including the title in 1992 (Photo: Getty Images/Getty Images)
Rod Wallace also moved north from Southampton for £1.6 million a month or so later, while other astute additions in the summer of 1991 included Sheffield Wednesday youngsters David Wetherall and Jon Newsome, plus Nottingham Forest midfielder Steve Hodge.
Wilkinson adds: “This time of year is all about getting your preparation right. Making sure the pre-season fixtures are as you would like them, looking at what you previously thought you might need compared to what you actually do need.
“We’d identified the players we wanted before that summer (of 1991) started. I won’t say early in the previous season. But, certainly, as the season went on you have your ideas about what might need to be done in the summer.
“Having said that, it’s only when that first season is over that you can properly sit down and think, ‘Was I right in my predictions?’. If I wasn’t right, I then asked myself what I had to do about that.
“Of course, it is different now. By that, I mean the sense that tenures are shorter. You haven’t got as long as a manager. It is also a global situation in terms of every player being looked at. But what has not changed is the need to find a way to win with the players you have got.”
Like Wilkinson, Bielsa has certainly become a Leeds manager who has found a way to win. The 2-0 triumph at St Mary’s was the 72nd of his near three-year reign, his side’s tendency to go for broke or die trying underlined by them being the only team in the Premier League not to draw an away game this season.
Any new signings — United are understood to be focusing on strengthening the midfield, along with searching for a left-back — will have to fit into that mindset.
Just who Leeds move for remains to be seen but Wilkinson is a firm fan of a team who moved up to eighth in the table courtesy of Tuesday night’s win at St Mary’s.
“I have enjoyed Leeds, yes,” he says about his old club’s resurgence under Bielsa. “Of course I have. It is a team I managed and a team where I spent most of my managerial career. I enjoyed it and never wanted to leave, really. Only the takeover (by Caspian Media Group in 1996) changed that.
“It has been good to see the club doing well. Not just for Leeds but Yorkshire as well. This county needs success. We need our football teams and our rugby teams and our sportspeople to be successful. In the long run, this undoubtedly is better for all of us. Whether (you are) into sport or not, success creates energy for the county.”
As for next season, Wilkinson urges fans not to get too carried away.
“Leeds have surprised a few this season,” he adds. “Which is good. It has not just been different, it has been very different. The job now, as coach, is to look at what he has got, look at the challenges ahead and come up with ways of dealing with them. He has certainly found a way this season.
“We had that same challenge in 1991 that Leeds face now. You don’t achieve things by sitting there and saying, ‘Didn’t we do well?’. The first target when the season starts is, ‘How many points do we need to avoid relegation?’. The sooner you get those points, the better and the happier you are.”
Bielsa, surely the manager to make the biggest impact at Elland Road since Wilkinson’s own arrival in 1988 at a time when United were hovering dangerously close to the relegation zone in the old Second Division, really couldn’t have put it better himself.