I don’t think it’s a downer on Bielsa but a realisation that sadly when it comes to top flight football money beats morals and coaching ability. When we were in the Championship I always said Bielsa will never take us into Europe or top six of the PL. He has the ability to but his morals and beliefs would be his own stumbling block in that he’d refuse the players we’d need due to their attitude or price tag. You know yourself no other coach would persevere with Roberts or always find a space for Dallas no matter what position or play Cooper ahead of Struijk and Koch. We still need Bielsa at the moment and I think he is great, he is a club legend, we have lived a dream under his time at the club but we need to decide, are we going to be an Everton or do we want to be top six? I see Radz and Bielsa as our foundation, they’ve worked wonders but getting us to the next level, is it beyond them financially and morally in that we’d need to sign players that Bielsa would feel uncomfortable handling. On a huge positive, I never dreamed they’d undo the damage caused by Bates, Cellino and GFH in such a short period of history
Not having a go Rich but we all know we have probably the worlds best coach who just happens to be on the spectrum envelope of autism. Unique but frustrating as hell, but to date he just manages to get us through 50% injury total of first team but square pegs in round holes and kids. Nobody else would do that and we all want more first team players but he says no…… frustrating. But when he moves he moves quick as we saw with Pablo Alioski Berardi Costa and Poveda plus the likes of Casey Huggins etc loads of players moved out fast
Back on the subject of Kalvin moving to scum all I would say is this. Why would he. OGS is useless and has a great squad now and should be top of the league but he cant do tactics. Yesterday we saw Bielsaball in full flow carried out by better players than Leeds have and the game was brilliant between Liverpool and City. If Kalvin went anywhere it would be to City because Pep plays Bielsaball and he has mates there. Why get involved in the red argument. Chelsea, Liverpool and City play fast flowing Bielsaball and its the way forward as done properly nobody can live with it just like Watford against us
Red tops only survive because of things like Facebook and the advertising revenue it can bring. I’ve noticed an ever increasing trend for click bait stories and for articles that are solely aimed at bringing replies, discussion and arguing. They employ multi media people to drum up interest, they see a story has created 500 replies on FB so it’s regurgitated again and again. I keep getting Leeds Insider articles on my timeline, the garbage they invent to create a response and discussion is unreal. One guy summed it up on a reply that stood out when he said “Leeds Insider”, “I bet they’ve never even stepped foot into ER”. I lost count how many times Sky Sport ran a story on FB about the return of Ronaldo. “Who is the greatest ever number 7”. “Salah or Ronaldo who would you prefer” I could go on and on, every day they used a story about Ronaldo vs someone because it created a stir.
I know you’re not mate and I agree with you. It’s just a feeling that we are kind of stuck between two ways forward at the moment. Put yourself in Radz shoes and nobody else’s. What is the way forward, you want to follow Leicesters approach to a certain extent but you have a coach that would not stand for you signing and selling players without his total backing. You’re also a business man and you want backing from Americans who do things differently to us, you present them with a business plan but you have to explain the importance of your coach who will only sign a one year at a time contract. You can’t say to the Americans without him this team might get relegated but keep him and we will always finish half way. I think Radz has a life after Bielsa plan, I trust he has got it right. I believe it might involve some big outgoing transfer fees and I feel it would be risky not knowing what the likes of Gelhardt have to offer. I believe we could definitely see Phillips leaving for around £100m to City maybe Raphinha to Liverpool for £50m but not until Bielsa says I’ve took you as far as I can
