Leeds United’s 2-0 victory over Southampton last night should hopefully have put talk of the Bielsa-burnout to bed once and for all and silence the critics who have relished the opportunity to question whether the Whites could last the distance.
Goals from Patrick Bamford and Tyler Roberts helped see off the Saints and assure a top-half finish for Marcelo Bielsa's side in their first season back in the Premier League.
It was United’s third straight win and means that they have lost just one of their last 10 matches.
That’s a good run whoever the opponents, but an exceptional one when it includes games against Manchester City, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United.
The fact that it has come at the end of the season will offer additional encouragement to Leeds fans too.
Much of the narrative around Leeds since appointing Bielsa in 2018 has centred on the much-discussed 'Bielsa-burnout'.
The idea behind the burnout is that the Leeds manager’s playing style is so intense that players can’t sustain it for a whole season and run out of steam at the end of the campaign.
While that may have arguably happened in Bielsa’s first season at Elland Road, it didn’t appear to happen last season and the club’s current run of form shows it certainly isn’t happening now.
This chart shows Leeds’ rolling points per game average over their previous six league matches.
Bielsa’s side have peaked at an average of 2.0 points per game twice this season - on January 31, after beating Leicester three-one, and on April 25 after drawing nil-nil with Manchester United.
What the graph shows though is how from mid-March, rather than suffer burnout, Leeds have actually surged to their best form of the season.
