I thought Spygate had been pretty well covered – both accurately and inaccurately – during the 2018/19 campaign and even though former Arsenal player Paul Merson utterly lambasted those calling for a points deduction for Leeds United following manager Marcelo Bielsa’s dastardly plan to stand on public ground and let a staff member use his eyes, it appears he’s forgotten the length our Argentine legend goes to ahead of games.
Speaking recently to Sky Sports with everyone holding the expectation that the Play-Off semi-finals will see Leeds play whoever eventually finishes in sixth place in the table, leaving last weekend’s opponents Aston Villa to play West Bromwich Albion, Merson felt this would be a problem when it came to our planning.
“Villa and West Brom sort of know each other they are going to be playing each other, Leeds won’t have a clue who they are playing yet. Because there are three teams, they have got to wait to literally the last day of the season to know if it’s going to be Bristol City, Derby or Middlesbrough.”
Hands up anybody who doesn’t already think Bielsa has two trillion gigabytes of information on all three sides?
I get what Merson is trying to say here but no side will go any further in planning for the Play-Offs at the moment than simply deciding which players won’t play the final game owing to a niggling injury that could be made worse, or the potential of missing out if they pick up a suspension.