Week after week opposition managers wax lyrical about Leeds United, Marcelo Bielsa and their absolutely unwavering path to promotion.
It can become tiring for fans and readers, all that hyperbole, but there is one tactical trait which seems to underpin all of the praise and awe.
Man marking. A simple tenet of football tactics which has been around as long as the sport has existed, but for some reason, coaches are amazed by United using this without the ball.
Danny Cowley, Huddersfield Town’s boss, was the latest to talk about it after Saturday’s game.
“Without the ball, they play man to man and it’s really aggressive, even from throw-ons,” he said.
“They play right up against the thrower, don’t allow the ball to come back to the thrower, but that does then allow you to hurt them in other ways.
“Defensive systems are defensive systems, aren’t they? They can all be broken. If there was one defensive system that couldn’t be broken we’d all be doing it.”
It’s hard to argue this man-to-man system is not working for Bielsa, without dragging up all the numbers of a full season which led to third and nearly half a season with the league’s best defence.
It may be rare, it may impress opposition coaches who pore over tactics just as much as Bielsa, but it is not flawless as only Bielsa can point out himself.
“I don’t consider that defending one v one is something good,” he said. “It’s the opposite, it's not good.
“There is something worse than defending one v one, that is letting [the] opponent have no markers.
“I would always like our players [to] mark one of them, the closet one and not follow one across the whole pitch.
“Now if we cannot make this exchange of mark naturally, I prefer our opponent doesn’t find free players to give passes to.
“What you ask from the point of view ‘[this] is the most difficult to achieve’. We are working for a year-and-a-half to avoid persecution (conceding goals) and we haven't got that yet.
“At least what we have achieved is our opponent is always marked.”
