Leeds supporters would never have let Marsch succeed because of their blind Bielsa worship

Jesse Marsch was ‘doomed to failure’ and ‘on a hiding to nothing’ at Leeds despite a £140m spend, all because the supporters randomly revere Marcelo Bielsa.

Beware the ideas of Marsch
‘SO FAREWELL Jesse Marsch, doomed to failure at Leeds and on a hiding to nothing the minute he opened his mouth at Elland Road,’ is an entertaining opening gambit from The Sun‘s Mark Irwin, who seems to believe that the American was never going to be able to avoid getting sacked within a year.

But why? What made Marsch’s job at Leeds so unalterably impossible? Well obviously he ‘never stood a chance of winning over the good folk of Yorkshire, where they still worship Marcelo Bielsa as one of their own’.

Feels like doing well might have been a start but go on.

‘Dour, monosyllabic and communicating via a series of grunts, what was it that so endeared Bielsa to the Leeds supporters?’

Ah right. So this isn’t about Marsch whatsoever. This is an excuse for Irwin to keep being weird about Bielsa. Righto.

‘Because even though Bielsa Ball was taking their team back to the Championship at a rate of knots, they were still inconsolable when he was replaced by Marsch a year ago.’

Leeds were 16th, two points above the relegation zone when they sacked the man who was taking them ‘back to the Championship at a rate of knots’ last February. And it is surely not too difficult to just ask a Leeds supporter why they might idolise the coach who transformed their playing style, got them promoted and flirted with European qualification with a Championship-level squad and wage budget.

They love Bielsa for a reason. But that does not mean Marsch was ‘doomed to failure’.

‘There is an unacknowledged snobbery in English football which means we can never accept a Yank can teach us anything about the game we gave to the world.’

And there is an unacknowledged knobbery in talking about ‘Yanks’ and ‘the game we gave to the world’.

Irwin adds that ‘we still cling to the belief that only someone from a ‘proper football country’ can be trusted to run our top teams,’ which a) is absolute b*llocks and b) ‘meant that he spent his entire time at Leeds desperately trying not to say the ‘s’ word, because the mere mention of ‘soccer’ would drive the fans apoplectic.’

Or as Marsch himself said at his first Leeds press conference in an attempt to cut such nonsense off at the source: “I have used the word “football” since I was a…