Swansea City 2-2 Leeds United: The Stubborn Strategy

Football is filled with alternative realities; shots that go one side of the post rather than the other, decisions given or not given, players in the wrong shirts, playing for the wrong clubs.

Oli McBurnie is one of the latter. A Leeds born Leeds United fan, Paul Heckingbottom wanted to sign him for Leeds United this summer, so we could have felt the benefit of his tireless charges at defenders and referees, his pink and bearded head contorted with rage like a screaming ham joint fringed with mouldy rings of pineapple. He could have scored his two goals for us instead of Swansea, getting between what passes for our centre-halves to shoot past Bailey Peacock-Farrell, then getting away from the centre-back imposters to loop a header over him, and he'd have been very welcome.

But if we followed this alternative history to the post-match press conference, would we like what we heard? 'That effort, work rate and commitment is why I brought Oli to this club,' quoth the Heckingbottom of our alt-reality. '100 per cent. It's just a shame it wasn't matched by the players around him. I thought we were lucky to get in at half-time one down, and I told them what I wanted in the second half. Their goal were a blow, though, and their third and fourth. Oli took his chances well but they were a consolation by then. We need to be much better, with and without the ball, 100 per cent.'

And so on. McBurnie might have been nice to have, but if it meant keeping Heckingbottom, the price would have been too high; we would have got nothing from this trip to Swansea, for one thing. That's arguably true of a lot of our recent head coaches, so let us say yet another prayer for this living reality, even if watching Marcelo Bielsa managing Leeds United still feels like being lost in a dream world.

In his own ways Bielsa is as inflexible as Heckingbottom often was, but rather than standing on the sidelines looking dumbfounded, his mind empty of ideas for changes, Bielsa sits, crouches or prowls, eyes on the action, with one aim in mind that inspires countless thoughts and strategies: get this plan working. Bielsa has one way to play. His flexibility comes from the extraordinary lengths he'll stretch to so that he doesn't have to change a thing.

Drawing in Swansea has already raised the doubts that afflicted and ultimately toppled Thomas Christiansen. Does Bielsa have a plan B? Couldn't we play two up front, or adjust the defence to cover for lacking centre-halves, or sign a new one to cover the injured ones? The answer to all those questions is likely to be no; there's no plan B, there are no alternatives, and all Bielsa's efforts will be concentrated on making plan A work to perfection, even in imperfect circumstances.