Marcelo Bielsa has already left his mark on Manchester United’s Old Trafford, even before Leeds United’s possible trip there next season.
Bielsa’s Athletic Bilbao team turned over the Red Devils in the Europa League in 2012 across two legs, but it was the first leg at Old Trafford which turned heads.
Gary Neville, speaking to Sky Sports, recalls the match and some of the analysis made after it at the time.
As Whites fans well know, Bielsa’s teams are defined by their work rate and energy. Neville had never seen anything like it in 2012.
“I always remember the three teams who came to Old Trafford and ran the most, the Athletic Bilbao team a few years ago in the Europa League,” he said.
“Believe it or not, the Blackburn Rovers team that had Robbie Savage in midfield, Steven Reid, (Morten Gamst) Pedersen, that midfield was a joke in terms of its running.
“And then there was an Aston Villa team that had (James) Milner, (Ashley) Young, (Stewart) Downing and (Stiliyan) Petrov.
“They were the hardest-running midfielders that had ever come to Old Trafford in terms of high intensity and endurance stuff.
“So it’s interesting, the midfield and wide players had the legs to be able to get up and down, but also quite quick with it as well.
“I remember speaking to Tony Strudwick (analyst) a few days after that game [against Bilbao] and he said he had to look at the stats three times to believe them.
“He said they were off the scale in terms of running stats, he’d never seen anything like that at Old Trafford.
“Sometimes you need something like that when you’re at a top club and you’re pushing yourself to the highest limits.
“You get a team who came to Old Trafford and ran further than you and faster than you, you think, ‘okay, we need to step it up a level’.
“And that Bielsa team was stupidly ridiculous in terms of its stats it posted that night.”
