Pre match-pressern:
Bielsa's here
First question coming up...
First time I'm late
I’m very sorry for being so late, but don’t tell the rest of the world.
Team news
No news. Cooper is out of the group. Phillips comes back, that’s all.
Six matches in three weeks - hopeful they will play this period?
Regarding my own calculation, statistics, in every match we miss four players. For this reason, we have 18 players and four young players with us. So, when you have four, five, six injuries, we can solve it and it’s something that happens all the time. If you see the research about this, the team who makes least changes in the line-up is Leeds.
That is possible because there is regular performance, but also because we have fewer injuries.
Casey
He played just a few minutes to take conclusions. He’s a centre-back who is able to play as a defensive midfielder. He’s a young player looking for space like Davis, Struijk, Hosannah. They are players working with the team for a while, as Clarke, Shackleton were before. They achieve to add to the group.
Hull - only West Brom stop them scoring - main threat?
It’s a team with good attackers. They like to play in attack, you can see this. All of them manage the ball well. They have a clear style and they are a dynamic team.
Lessons from last year? Better equipped now?
If we learnt something we have to show from now.
Racism this weekend - battle football can win?
Yes, of course. It’s a victory society has to win and the war is against this kind of thing, minorities. Every discrimination is shameful.
Phillips back in the team or 18?
Come back to play.
[Make a change?]
Someone is going to leave the team. I have not decided.
How much enjoying this year compared to last?
In football, every achievement, you cannot enjoy it. If there is a difference, we still have to show it. It is not the proper time to say we have made a difference yet.
It wouldn’t be good to compare this team to last year’s team. There are problems from last season we are solving, but solutions we found last year we are not finding this season. Last season we scored every four or five chances, now it’s seven or eight. Last year we didn’t have a clean sheet like now, but it’s just analysis, we cannot say a good defence now means a good defence in the future.
I am surprised because you are a specialist. We interpret one part of the good competition as we are talking about the whole season. If there is something we have to learn from last season, it’s not important what we do at halfway, more what we do at the end.
I take conclusions about this part of the competition. If I answer the question you are doing, after we don’t know if it’s true in the future and we will stay in a bad position. Answer is to ignore what happened last season, more important at the end of the competition. Every team has a lack of regularity in the competition.
We have to prepare the team to correct this bad role or correct moves. There is something not convenient - thinking we have achieved something before we do.
McCalmont and Edmondson out on loan next month?
Something we have to take in January. Always we are going to do the best thing for their development. I know why you are asking about Alfie and Ryan because there are a lot of players like them who deserve pressure like that.
Do you have a style you relish facing?
Control the game, that is best for us. Avoid them having the ball. Try to avoid they find us with a lack of organisation when they recover the ball.
Why do you think the injury problems are better this year? What has improved?
Maybe I didn’t express myself well. We are prepared to have four or five players injured.
And another positive fact is our players are used to our style of training, how we charge them and after you have more hours working to prevent injuries.
A lot of managers are impressed by Leeds going man-to-man off the ball- how hard is it to do that?
I don’t consider that defending one v one is something good. I think it’s the opposite, not good. But there is something worse than defending one v one - letting opponent have no markers. I would always like our players mark one of them, the closet one and not follow one across the whole pitch.
Now if we cannot make the exchange of mark naturally, I prefer that our opponent doesn’t find free players.
What you ask is the most difficult to achieve. We are working for a year and a half to avoid persecution but we have not achieved that.
But what we have achieved is out players marking.
Bowen's threat
You know how he plays. This season we can see a lot of good attackers in every team.
And in most of the teams, not just those at the top. This is a very good player who unbalances the team. And he scores because he has a good shot.
Plan to stop him?
Always we prevent the team how to avoid risk from the opponent when they attack.
Our defensive method does not change.
What chances is the level of the attacker.
We don’t underestimate inferior opponents so we prepare ourselves for the worst situation. In this case he’s a great attacker but we keep working in the same strategy and keep trying to improve this.
How late in the prep for Huddersfield did you know about Cooper's injury?
We analysed daily how he was improving. I understand the question, but I don’t understand another sense.
[How adaptable were the players to his absence if it was a very late decision?]
In the case Cooper came back to the team, he and Liam had played a lot of matches together. Adaptation not difficult. Ayling, Berardi, Phillips are players used to playing in defence too. I think if we miss Liam there is not a great difficulty to adapt. Same if Berardi or Ayling plays. Eighteen months together. So there are a lot of things we know how to do.
That's all from Bielsa