Marcelo Bielsa is, without doubt, the best manager Leeds United have had for a generation.
A total of 14 managers came and went between the club getting relegated from the Premier League in 2004 and Bielsa joining in 2018.
They all tried to get Leeds back to the top flight but failed, often miserably.
Go here for all the latest Leeds United news and opinion
The transformative effect Bielsa had on the club, both on and off the pitch, is something that will live with Leeds fans for the rest of their lives.
The impact he had on fans was an emotional one, and as such it feels slightly wrong to try and sum up Bielsa’s tenure in terms of stats.
However, this is a stats article, so we’ll give it a go.
LEAGUE POSITION
The most obvious place to start looking at the numbers behind Marcelo Bielsa’s reign is the club’s league position.
Bielsa took over a mid-table Championship club that looked like it was going nowhere.
His impact was instant, turning them into title contenders seemingly overnight.
The club’s last appearance in the Championship playoffs came in 2006, but Bielsa got them there in his first season, before ultimately winning the league and steering the club to a mid-table finish in the Premier League.
ATTENDANCES
Tickets for Leeds games were pretty easy to get hold of before Marcelo Bielsa took charge at the club.
The Leeds sides of Neil Warnock, Dave Hockaday, Steve Evans and others just didn’t have the pulling power required to fill a near 40,000 capacity stadium.
People had fallen out of love with Leeds, and Elland Road just wasn’t a fun place to be.
The rekindling of love for the club that Marcelo Bielsa brought about in the Leeds faithful is perhaps his greatest and most important achievement, and one that fans will never forget.
This isn’t the kind of thing that can easily be summed up in stats, but one way is to look at attendances.
Ten seasons ago the club had an average attendance of just 23,283 for home league games.
That dropped to just 21,572 in 2012/13, the season when Neil Warnock and Brian McDermott were in charge.
Attendances were up to an impressive 33,598 in Bielsa’s first season in charge, and have peaked at 36,277 this season.
That works out as 96% of capacity this season compared to just 57% in 2012/13.
Tickets are so in demand now that fans without season tickets struggle to get tickets, even with memberships, something that wasn’t a problem 10 years ago.
WINNING
Marcelo Bielsa won 49% of his games in charge of Leeds United.
That’s just lower than David O’Leary, who took the club to the Champions League semi-finals and had a win ratio of 50%
Don Revie, meanwhile, had a win ratio of 53%, and Howard Wilkinson, the last Leeds manager to win a major title, had a one of 43%.
GOALS GOALS GOALS
Leeds United have scored 273 goals under Marcelo Bielsa.
That works out at an average of 1.6 per game.
Stoke City saw Leeds’ wrath the most, conceding 19 goals against Bielsa’s side.
Derby conceded the next ost (16), followed by West Brom (15), and Blackburn (12).
For the latest Leeds United news direct to your inbox, go here to sign up to our free newsletter
