Jon Newsome questions Marcelo Bielsa decision in Leeds defeat

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Jon Newsome has told BBC Radio Leeds (broadcast on 5/10; 17:08) that there was one decision that Marcelo Bielsa made during Leeds United’s defeat to Millwall that he would question.

Leeds fell to their third league defeat of the season on Saturday. It was a controversial game at the Den, with the Lions winning a penalty after 14 minutes. Tom Bradshaw got the wrong side of Gaetano Berardi and went to ground inside the box.

The decision to award a spot-kick initially appeared to be the correct call. But James Linington surprisingly decided to send Berardi off. And replays then showed that there was, at most, minimal contact between the two players and Bradshaw had decided to go to ground.

Leeds went into the break 2-0 down despite responding fairly well during the first-half. But within 30 seconds of the restart, they had halved the deficit with Gjanni Alioski getting on the end of Jack Harrison’s pass.

The Whites dominated the large part of the second-half. And it looked inevitable that they would create the chance that could potentially lead to an equaliser.

However, that opportunity did not come, and Millwall managed to get back on top towards the end. And Newsome suggested after the game that Tyler Roberts’s introduction with 14 minutes remaining appeared to be one of the main reasons Leeds’s push for an equaliser fizzled out.

“The only other question mark I would say is that I thought when he brought Kalvin Phillips off and brought Tyler Roberts on, it upset us a little bit,” he told BBC Radio Leeds. “It didn’t really give us a positive. I can understand why he did it. I think maybe he’s thinking let’s get more skilful, technical players on, attacking-minded. But it never worked like that.”

TBR’s View

It did appear that Leeds found it much tougher to get out of their own half during the latter stages. And Phillips’s absence may well have been a key factor.

It is also probably fair to suggest that the timing of Berardi’s dismissal started to hurt Leeds more in those final minutes. The majority of Bielsa’s squad had been asked to play over 75 minutes against a physical Millwall side with 10 men.

Roberts was unable to make an impact. But that was arguably more to do with the decision to take Phillips off. He provides that link between the defence and midfield, so perhaps Roberts should have replaced one of the men further up the field.