Remember last season? All the talk was Wolves and
how they were cheating due to third party ownership.
After AR and others questioned the legality of that, EFL
came out and said "Nah, fook it, they're good." And they went up.

I hope EFL and FA take the same stance here, seeing as though MB has not broken any laws.

I wonder if he put in the bit about giving all the info to pep after the game as a way of telling every other manager that they can have the info on derby if they want it

Leedsforever, there were no wire cutters / pliers or even a ladder (as suggested by Keown!). If you read the Derby police twitter, all they said was that the person was on Public road, they checked him and found nothing illegal and asked him to move on. No damage to any fence. Also despite Lampard stating they came onto the training ground, the police have categorically stated no officer went onto the training ground.

Still don't get why this press conference was graded as an energency conference

Bielsa is an absolute legend and just proved why they call him the sufficiently crazy one.

Turn on the TV to notice sky sports sensationalism that misses the point of the press conference entirely

comment by lufc - Harrogate (U6810)
posted 1 minute ago
I don’t see any negative.

He’s basically holding his own case to the FL.

What can they do? Yeah other clubs aren’t going to like it. So what?
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The FL is the least of our problems. This is a witch hunt. MB is 100% integrity. This will now be challenged every hour of the day from now until he leaves us. His friends and family will be hounded, his record will be ridiculed and his life will be hell on earth. How can he continue as our coach?

comment by Peakwhite (U7815)
posted 1 minute ago
Still don't get why this press conference was graded as an energency conference
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To play with our emotions

The good thing that Bielsa has done here is to show that he dint gain any advantage from having training watched. All the analysis was lengthy and had to be done before that and so this counters any argument for a punishment around points deduction (which I don't think would happen anyway).

However, if he has done all his prep and training ground monitoring makes no difference then why do it, he's not really explained that and if someone was genuinely looking to trespass re pliers then that is a genuine issue.

One hopes that pre-empting any investigation and bringing this 'evidence' out into public domain limits any actions by EFL however I fear it will only serve to make them more determined to find fault.

I hope the club and Bielsa say nothing more about the matter publicly now until after investigation is concluded.

comment by Jonty (U4614)
posted 9 seconds ago
The good thing that Bielsa has done here is to show that he dint gain any advantage from having training watched. All the analysis was lengthy and had to be done before that and so this counters any argument for a punishment around points deduction (which I don't think would happen anyway).

However, if he has done all his prep and training ground monitoring makes no difference then why do it, he's not really explained that and if someone was genuinely looking to trespass re pliers then that is a genuine issue.

One hopes that pre-empting any investigation and bringing this 'evidence' out into public domain limits any actions by EFL however I fear it will only serve to make them more determined to find fault.

I hope the club and Bielsa say nothing more about the matter publicly now until after investigation is concluded.
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I think that was the purpose of the press conference. We knew the issue wasn't going away, so this was an attempt to deal with it one go and allow future press conferences to focus on the football.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.
Something I pointed out a few weeks ago when I said we would start to concede goals and we needed possible plans when this happened. I did actually point out that Bielsa was way ahead of even me!
Find it staggering that so many appear to be amazed about the preparation from Bielsa.

Sky now editing the presser to make out his dossiers on all clubs were actually all gained from spying at their training grounds. They won't mention the hundreds of hours of match analysis done on each opponent.

Now that the press conference is over can we get back to the important issue of building a statue for the legend.

Almost every other club wish they had him

He said he did it for his own anxiety, which I found interesting.

Clearly he feels he has to do as much as humanly possible or he just isint happy

He said because it's not against the rules so do it and assumed others were doing it too us.

Why? He said to ease his anxiety, clearly a perfectionist obsessed with football

And the negative we can see from this briefing is that people will now recognise how easy Bielsa is to wind up. Will be interesting to see how he reacts when asked about it in pre match presser.

I agree Jonty. I certainly don't feel comfortable with Bielsa openly stating that he's arranged to have the training sessions watched of each club played so far this season. That's throwing fuel onto the fire and, in a way, taking the pi$$ out of the EFL. This makes me think the club's legal team will have given the green light to Bielsa

I think he'll shake any more questions off as he said at the start thats why he called conference

No negatives for me. He calls the shots doesn’t he

Sorry, but anxiety isn't a sufficient reason.

What is he going to do, suffer anxiety attacks if he cant send someone to training ground?

What he really means is he wants to check of something has changed last minute and I can understand that and I still don't think there is anything wrong with that.

comment by Peakwhite (U7815)
posted 31 seconds ago
I agree Jonty. I certainly don't feel comfortable with Bielsa openly stating that he's arranged to have the training sessions watched of each club played so far this season. That's throwing fuel onto the fire and, in a way, taking the pi$$ out of the EFL. This makes me think the club's legal team will have given the green light to Bielsa
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Not at all. He's demonstrating how compliant he is in the investigation. Much rather that than someone who pretended it wasn't true only for it to be proved to be true.

Someone like Lampard, even.

Peak, no law has been broken and I can't see that any EFL rule has been broken and the EFL would know that themselves pretty quickly.

When you talk about things being done in good faith, it's really hard to uphold as it becomes one person's definition of good faith compared to someone else's.

It's like the term best endeavours, its meaningless.

magnificent.

What I would give to have Bielsa manage in Scotland, never mind my own team.

Hero

The BBC article on it is very interesting.

Basically they are supportive of him, comes across like they are saying his effort is insane

He's had his honesty and integrity questioned by loads of media people the last 4 days. He's come out and defended himself, arguing his case like a lawyer. He's said all he needs to now on the matter and at the start of the press conference he said he was doing it to keep the focus on the game in the next press conference.

With all the detail he's just gone into, it's hard for anyone to argue he cheated (which was basically the argument against him).

He knows what he's doing.

that would be Popey, he was saying it was like being in a coaching masterclass.