Former Leeds United defender Pontus Jansson has opened up on how working under Marcelo Bielsa last season gave him a "headache" - but praised the impact the experienced boss has had on him.
Jansson left the West Yorkshire club during the summer, joining Brentford for a fee of £5.5m, with rumours of a rift between Jansson and Bielsa surfacing not long after pre-season commenced at Thorp Arch.
The Swede was one of the Whites' standout star's last season, being named the club's best player by his manager, and although there was believed to be interest from Premier League clubs, Jansson instead opted for the Bees.
And ahead of their game against QPR on Monday night, the centre-back has revealed what it is like to be a player under Bielsa's guidance.
"To work with Bielsa for one year gave me a lot of headaches also because of long days, a lot of meetings and a lot of things to take in," he told Sky Sports.
"But it helped me so much, not only as a player, but also as a person how to be a professional footballer, how to eat, how to behave, how to sleep, all those things to recover well.
"I came here with expectations [of me], but I like that. It made me more concentrated. Now I'm getting older, I don't care that much about my performance anymore - if the team play good, it's more likely that I'm also going to play good. I think that's come with age.
"That disappears when you get older, especially at Leeds because Leeds is such a big club and you want to be the main man to get the headlines. Now I'm at Brentford, I don't have that. I don't want to be the main man, I just want to be the captain, to help my team-mates and the young players to play good football."
Injury ruled Jansson out of United's play-off semi-final first leg win over Derby last season, with the defender then forced to watch from the bench as his side were beaten by the Rams at Elland Road in the second leg - and the 28-year-old is out to banish the nightmares the defeat brought.
"Obviously how it ended last year that I was injured in the two most important games, the play-off semi-finals, and then we lost," he added. "For me that was a dark moment of my career. I had a dream to take Leeds to the Premier League and when I couldn't play it felt so bad.
"So now when I came here, I said to Rasmus (Ankersen) the sporting director, the first time I spoke to him, that we have to aim high. I know it's a young squad and it's a smaller club, but still we have to aim high. There's no meaning of aiming for top six, when you can aim for top two. And if you aim for top two, there's a bigger chance that you are going to be top six.
"There's no meaning for us to talk about it to other people, to the fans, to the media. We can be quiet, work and take it game-by-game and then hopefully when it comes to April/May we're going to be in the top six."
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