Some of the choice tweets from Bielsa's conference (for those who don't have twitter):
"Bielsa now using a big screen to demonstrated his analysis. Says what he's showing us took more than 300 hours of work. He's running us through the information he gathers for individual games, using Derby as an example.
Bielsa says his staff watched all 51 games Derby played last season. Each game took four hours to analyse. "Why did we do that? Because we think this is professional behaviour. It's to try and avoid being ignorant about the competition we're playing in."
BIelsa asks a journalist to pick out a specific game - Chelsea 3 Derby 2 from last season. Showing us the starting line-ups, the data from the game, substitutions and changes to formation during the game etc.
This is a spectacular takedown of Spygate. Now showing us percentages for the number of times Derby have used certain formations and which players have moved around in different positions. "This gives you priorities."
Now we're seeing analysis of the formations Derby have played against, to try and establish which structure they struggle against. "All this information, I don't memorise it. But if I have a doubt, I can ask myself the question and have a look at this document."
Bielsa showing a video to demostrate what Harry Wilson is planning to do when he raises both hands before taking a corner. It's a specific play which Derby employ. "You cannot analyse football if you do not know who each player is."
the video is 41 minutes long, made up of Derby attacks over the course of the season. "When you see 41 minutes, you see what the path that the opponent attacks and you see the defensive weakness." His staff then condense the video to eight minutes for the players to watch.
The players also get a seven/eight minute video looking at defensive points. "The idea is to give the players a look at the opponent in 15 minutes."
Now going through every Derby formation and showing who plays where most often and how is changes. He knows how many minutes each player has played in each position. You sort of wonder if even Lampard knows this much about Derby.
This is what we’re looking at:
Bielsa (and this is the rub:) "I don't need to go to watch a training session of an opponent to know how the opponent plays."
Great story. Bielsa says he showed Guardiola his analysis after Bilbao lost to Barcelona in the Copa Del Rey final. "Guardiola had a look at it and he told me 'you know more about Barcelona than me'. But it was useless information because they scored three goals."
Stoke are next up for Leeds. But they've changed manager. So since Nathan Jones took charge (last week), Bielsa and his staff have analysed every game he had at Luton this season.
Bielsa thanks us for our patience, tells us he's stupid for doing all this analysis, opens the door and walks out (of the room, not the club). We're done.
It comes down to anxiety for Bielsa - he says he analyses all of this because he's anxious to make sure he's got all his basis covered. Think the highlight of my time doing this job was his mic-drop at the end. "Thank you." Gone."
He did the same thing when he was in charge of our National Team (extensive video analysis, with hours and hours of matches condensed into 8-9 minutes videos for the players to watch), so it's definitely his modus operandi. Love him. And he remains humble as ever.