Marcelo Bielsa has more tactical football knowledge in one of his little fingers than resides the brains of the Leeds United press corps combined, so there was only so much you could fight with him over. His ideas were his ideas and he stood by them to the end. The best of times vindicated those ideas. Difficult times only hardened his commitment to them.
In summary, Bielsa was his own man, a manager born of the attitude that for as long as someone was paying him to coach a squad, the job of coaching them was his alone. It was nobody’s prerogative to tell him what to do, how to do it or how to do it differently, not the club’s, not the crowd’s and not a journalist’s; less a case of saying you were wrong than reminding you that he thought for himself.
That was apparent in several respects over his near four years at Leeds but rarely more so than in the period when Joe Gelhardt came to be cast as a lifeboat in the storm of deteriorating results. Bielsa could see the flair in Gelhardt, the raw value of a young forward halfway between the academy and the first team, but he did not let individual traits seduce him and when it came to choosing an impact substitute, Bielsa was more inclined to send on Tyler Roberts.
He would explain to us in technical terms why Roberts was the right pick, why there was tactical logic behind that preference, but as time went on and form became anaemic, it caused consternation and not a few complaints. Gelhardt had a knack for turning games. Roberts too often didn’t. Ninety-nine out of 100 people would have played the wild card.
Perhaps it was a blind spot for Bielsa, but the last thing anyone was going to do was twist his arm and alter his team. You might not understand the decision but it is not yours to make and, ultimately, that was that.
And in that respect, it was where we were with Javi Gracia and Willy Gnonto on Tuesday night, locked in a discussion about why Gnonto wasn’t playing against Leicester City when Leeds were in the firing line for relegation, using up lives they didn’t have. A little like Gelhardt, isn’t Gnonto a gift horse? Does anyone really want to die wondering?
It was not as if Gnonto is being kept out of the team by rampant creativity out wide or deadly finishing through the middle. The 1-1 draw with Leicester ended with Patrick Bamford shooting wide from almost under the crossbar, head in hands afterwards, like just about every Leeds fan in the stands.
Gnonto warmed up, sat down, warmed up, sat down; on and on until it became clear Gracia had no intention of changing his side in the final 20 minutes, a spell which was consumed by paralysis. And so to the media room, where everyone wanted answers to Gnonto’s role. “My job is to take decisions,” Gracia said. “I try to do it thinking what’s best for the team.”
There is, patently, a line to be drawn when it comes to authority and a coach or manager’s ability to avoid picking line-ups on the whim of crowds or reporters, but it was not much of an explanation. It was also as much of an explanation as anyone was likely to get.
Gracia seemed to imply that after sending on Brenden Aaronson for Rodrigo on 68 minutes to try to press Leicester higher up the pitch, he had only one substitution window left and was not quite sure who on the pitch might run out of steam, but the crowd were left with the sense that Leeds were in the thick of a game they realistically had to win, holding back a player who might conceivably win it for them.
It is not that Gnonto is automatically the answer to their prayers but channelling prayers in his direction seems as good a strategy as most.
Gelhardt and Gnonto, in any case, are not identical footballers.
Gelhardt could bring the madness, the pulsating trickery that defenders hated facing with 80-plus minutes already in their legs, but in Bielsa’s final season he was fundamentally an ace up the sleeve.
Gnonto is a full Italy international, a young one admittedly, but already built physically and mentally for the Premier League. He has justified his starts, he has justified many of his cameos, and in the absence of a bun fight for this particular trophy, you might have him down for player of the year at Elland Road.
This is not might-as-well-try-the-kids, even though Gnonto just about passes as one. This is an asset holed up in a bunker, as time and hope run short.
Whether Gnonto could actually salvage Leeds from the hole they are in is, of course, a debate in itself.
There is so much more to the club’s predicament than the selection of an individual forward, and even Gracia is a pawn in the grander scheme. The past three weeks have ruined all that went well for the Spaniard initially and there was no denying that on Tuesday night, Leeds regressing and regressing in the second half made Leicester think there was at least a point in the game for them.
Gracia, with the walls closing in, felt too much like a detached observer. But if he is not the man, you could as reasonably ask if anyone is the man for this group. What could be made of them here and now? And at the risk of complacently gazing into the distance, how ready would this squad even be for another rumble in the Premier League come August?
But no mitigation avoids the fact that Gracia runs the risk of Gnonto becoming an albatross around his neck, the sort of thing that grates on a crowd whose patience is critical and who don’t like thinking that they are in the dark.
The 19-year-old is explosive, dynamic and apparently nerveless — and what sort of situation calls for those traits if not the one Leeds are in? It might not be a silver bullet, because relegation battles rarely offer those, but Gnonto is a card worth playing, and a very obvious one at that.
(Top photo: Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)