The more you look at it, the more the signs are there.
The club announced yesterday that Bryce Hosannah, Pascal Struijk and Kun Temenuzhkov have all signed new deals at Elland Road. In addition, Charlie Cresswell and Stuart McKinstry have signed their first professional contracts at the club.
I said in the summer that I found the idea Leeds were going after a number of young players interesting, at the time I was talking about Rafa Mujica, and although he has yet to pull on a Leeds shirt in anger, the principle remains the same.
I think that the emphasis that the club are putting on young players indicates to me that Marcelo Bielsa intends to stay here for a long time.
It’s not just in who he is signing up, but also who he is playing. If you take at the likes of Jack Clarke who made 25 appearances for the Whites last season in all competitions, or Jamie Shackleton who has made 30 appearances since Bielsa took over last year, you can see that he’s not scared to play youngsters when he wants/has to.
And as a result, it wouldn’t surprise me if we saw any of these players getting a look in when it comes to the first team at some point later in the season.
Whilst it is highly unlikely that we are going to have Bielsa stay with us for twenty plus years in the same way that Sir Alex Ferguson did at Manchester United, or Arsene Wenger at Arsenal, I do think that the fact he and the club is putting such an emphasis on youth with this many young signings is a good sign that he is willing to stick around.
What about you? Do you see these deals as a signal that Marcelo Bielsa is set to be here for a while to come? Or do you think that he will be out the door by the time any of these players are near the first team.