Bielsa Press Conference: Pre-Fulham

Bielsa's here
First question...

Team news
Pablo has trained with us all the week. Tomorrow we finish the work with him. According to how he feels, he is going to be involved int he match or not on Saturday.

Big problem?
It wasn’t a big deal because he had a muscular problem and he recovered in 10 days. Short recovery period points to it not being serious. Pablo knows his own body, we want to wait until tomorrow so he can confirm how he feels.

Tyler?
Well, without problems.

Other problems?
Everybody healthy, the only situation as Pablo. Forshaw, who is not going to be involved.

Have you coached behind closed doors before?
No, I don’t remember an experience like this.

Concerns for the players with no fans?
Of course, playing without supporters is not the same as with the fans. Playing home or away with no fans also there is a difference there. The feeling I have is obligation we home team has is not there. Not forced to win because the home fans are not there. In the other half, both teams are going to go for the match.

Crowd noise?
You can see this in different ways. You cannot replace supporters. Sometimes the people not there like to put a flag to represent the match in the stadium, that is a good thing to do. What I wish is football, the business of football doesn’t discover they can play without fans. How technology progressed a lot to unexpected places. Maybe one possibility in the future is the fans leaves his place [?]. That can be better economically. I don’t wish for that. The best thing is not to imagine this scenario because I wouldn’t like that to happen. It’s better to imagine one impossible option to in case that is possible to insist, we say we don’t agree with this situation. Everything around football has changed a lot, not just in this period, before as well. Sometimes it’s good things, impossible things can happen.

Mitrovic qualities
One player with quantity of goals he has scored, we just can’t analyse him looking at this point. In this sense he has a lot of resources to score. He appeared in the right moment, he has abilities to finish the chances, he can score in different ways.

Biggest game of the season? More than three points?
The eight matches left are going to generate the same expectation. Until the situation is defined. Every match is important. This has a more valuable meaning because we play with the direct and closest team to us to fight for promotion.

Liverpool 0-0 at Everton - second game scored four - attackers take longer to find rhythm?
We have examples like Liverpool and we have opposite examples as well. We have seen teams score a lot immediately.

Liverpool close to title - admire Klopp and their play?
In the last season, Liverpool and Klopp was the reference for everybody in football. Always you have teams and managers that attract you to copy them. Human beings always want to copy those who win. In this case, a lot of positive things I want to observe and to see.

From weekend analysis can you highlight differences before and after break?
I can talk about the match we played. I didn’t see a lot of big differences. The match we played was similar to a lot we played before COVID. Our physical performances was high, possession was high, we defended very well, even with the two goals we conceded, during all the Championship we didn’t receive goals through avoidable mistakes. It’s not normal the opponent took advantage of 100 per cent of chances about our attacking play. We should have created more danger than the danger we created. We attack four more times than the opponent had chances. We know we can improve. We play a lot of similar matches like the last one and have won. It was a good opportunity we couldn’t take advantage of.

Fulham strengths?
The characteristic of the human players usually play, they have attacking features. Full-backs, both midfielders inside and the three attackers. They are players with creative profiles. That is not normal in our league.

Do you like playing them?
We must be prepared for every team with different characteristics.

That's all from Bielsa
We’ll have more from, in full, later for you.

https://www.leeds-live.co.uk/sport/leeds-united/marcelo-bielsa-leeds-united-fulham-18484895