All lost in the supermarket

Of all the ways Marcelo Bielsa's successors as Leeds United manager must envy him, perhaps we haven't thought enough about him being left alone in supermarkets.

It's one of the best parts of the story. To explain Bielsa's impact in West Yorkshire, you can describe how he walked among his people in Wetherby Morrisons as a revered but unbothered figure. There were occasional selfies, shyly asked and awkwardly granted, but usually Marcelo was granted the highest honour Yorkshire people can bestow: he was left alone. Nodding terms, but left to his shopping.

It sounds like Daniel Farke must wish he could be granted the same respect as he pushes his trolley around Weetons in Harrogate. He can't even stop to check his messages, for whatever forgotten item Brenden has asked him to pick up — that boy just won't learn to write a shopping list — without being assailed by some local Leeds fan. Never with the quiet deference Bielsa used to enjoy, always instead with the same loud demand: 'Why int tha' playing tha' lad Boya? He's bes' footballer on t'team!'

"I just ask very politely," Farke said, after thirteen minutes of his distinctive circular discoursing on the subject of Jean-Mattéo Bahoya, "not to ask me in each and every press conference, and after and before each and every game, and also hopefully not in the supermarket when I buy my weekly milk bottle and orange juice and dark rye German bread."

His coffee and cake, presumably, gets delivered. But anyway I have some sympathy for Farke because, where Bahoya is concerned, this is not the first time Leeds United fans have become irrationally fixated on a reserve team player rumoured to have the skill and the magic to transform the first team.

Simon Grayson used to have the same problem, trying to get round the Ripon Booths without someone demanding to see Mike Grella in the team. Leeds, at the time, had Luciano Becchio and Jermaine Beckford scoring non-stop in League One; then Becchio alone augmented by Davide Somma. But, thanks to a Soccer AM interview in which Beckford and Neil Kilkenny said young American striker Grella was the most skilful player at the club, his status as new Baggio in waiting grew with every game in which Leeds didn't score three. 

That continued until, and even after, he was released from his contract to score five goals in 46 League One games for Brentford, Bury and Scunthorpe. That confirmed he was what he always was: a useful reserve Leeds had hoped might be capable of more, who was never really needed. His single most memorable contribution, was one of my favourite ever tweets, from March 2012: 'went out to get some dinner, Leeds is pumping with action'.