Bielsa always says two challenges face Leeds in the Premier League. When up against richer and more accomplished opponents, Leeds have to force them to play worse. And when other teams try to force Leeds into playing worse, Leeds have to maintain their own game.
Imagine being the first person to greet him after his retreat. They might have thought this madman would never stop talking. 'So what you're saying is, Marcelo,' they might interrupt in a breath-long pause after a night's talk has run on into breakfast, 'Maradona was a good player?'
I was nervous as a sixteen year old going to games, when I didn't know the unwritten rules, and I was nervous now, walking down under the station and over the river, not sure if the rules were still the same after eighteen months.
Dealing with last weekend first, Bielsa went to great detailed lengths to say it was all his fault, then said he was going to great detailed lengths to say it was all his fault to make sure everybody is clear that it was all his fault.
If we want those running stats for bragging rights, and those outlying scatter graphs redrawn to include our style of play, we have to hold on tight while our belief systems are subverted.
What was simple was promotion and staying up and annoying people. Those ambitions generated their own momentum and gave Leeds ample opportunity to piss people off. But what are we even doing now?
Bielsa has been working at Thorp Arch all the summer long, and when he wasn't working he was domiciled a matter of steps away, and the one time he ventured beyond Yorkshire, to Scotland, he was quickly located and photographed by fans.
Speaking from one fans' point of view, after using the Socios app, I can not see how involving fans will be helped, or made easier, or made more fun, or more engaging, or produce a better decision, by first requiring me to put money into an app to buy cryptocurrency to buy a fan token to vote.
Only for Kalvin Phillips' sake, I reckoned, should we be trying to remember anything about the otherwise numb blank of the Cardiff game, not letting a happy moment be buried by the bitterness all surrounding it. But it has only worked out that way now thanks to the Yorkshire Pirlo himself.