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By @Joe_Potter4
There is no denying that Leeds boss Marcelo Bielsa has worked absolute wonders this season.
Being hired manager of the Whites last Summer, the 63-year-old Argentine inherited a team that strolled into a 13th place finish last season and has managed to turn the squad into automatic promotion contenders.
Today, I am going to look at the five players who I believe have improved the most since Bielsa has taken the reigns at Elland Road.
Kemar Roofe
Roofe has been one of my favourite Leeds players for some time now because of his willingness to run for 90 minutes, his ability to carve chances out of nothing and his general selfless attitude when he plays. However, this year Bielsa has enhanced all of those attributes, and more.
He has become a bit of a deadly finisher, and I don't think Roofe gets enough credit from the Leeds United faithful. Think back to those two consecutive games against Aston Villa and Blackburn Rovers where Roofe scored late winners for Leeds to claim three points in both games. I don't think the Roofe of last season would have scored them chances.
This year he is cool as ice in front of goal, with 14 goals he has already matched his total for last season. Recently coming back from quite a serious injury, earlier than expected, Kemar Roofe might just be that cool, calm finisher that we need for the final push of the season.
Mateusz Klich
Bit of a weird one really, given that he spent the majority of last season out on-loan at FC Utrecht in the Netherlands, and the time he did spend at Leeds was mainly just him tweeting Gifs expressing his frustrations of not making it into Thomas Christiansen's match day squads. But that's all ancient history now because Marcelo Bielsa saw something in Klich that none of us fans could.
This season Klich has played as a dynamic box-to-box midfielder, chipping in with 8 goals from various distances. My personal favourites were his long-range efforts away at Derby and away at Sheffield Wednesday. Not only his goals, but his link-up play, his movement and ability to find and create space have all been phenomenal, and Klich has felt like a new signing this year.
Klich being in such good form throughout the best part of the season has also softened the blow of losing Samu Saiz. When Klich and Pablo Hernandez are pulling strings in the middle of the park, Leeds tend to win. Now how does the song go?
Ezgjan Alioski
I think it is fair to say that last season Ezgjan (Gianni) Alioski was one of the more resented Leeds United players by the fans.
Yes he popped up with a few decent goals, however most of the time he was just really irritating and frustrating to watch. Mid-way through this season, Barry Douglass picked up an injury, meaning there was a void at left-back. Berardi was injured and the squad was already massively depleted. That is when Bielsa called upon Gianni to take up this role at left-back. As Leeds fans we were shocked, how could a player who notoriously lacks discipline and loves a dodgy tackle here and there now be told he has defensive responsibilities to undertake. But it turns out Alioski has been playing left-back for Macedonia for a while now, and also played there for his previous club FC Lugano.
This was the turning point of Alioski's season. He has been praised for his work-rate, his passion and in my opinion, his biggest improvement, his understanding of the English game. He has a knack for winding up opposition players (I mean look at his haircut) but this usually seems to play to the benefit of Leeds. His fitness is second to none, making 42 appearances already this season with 7 goals and 5 assists.
Liam Cooper
What a captain Liam has become. When Liam Cooper signed for Leeds from Chesterfield in 2014 I had high hopes for him. But in his first couple of seasons he had to play in some pretty bad Leeds United sides, and when things started to look up with Garry Monk taking the reigns, he was kept out the team by Kyle Bartley and Pontus Jansson. Leeds failed to retain that partnership of Bartley and Jansson and this left many fans worried, and for good reason, we shipped a lot of goals last season, 64 to be exact.
This season something seems to have changed. His relationship with Pontus seems to have developed so much under Bielsa, they both compliment each other really well, where Jansson has incredible feet for a centre half, Cooper knows when to keep things simple, and can often be seen switching the ball across the pitch successfully. The number of individual errors he makes has reduced so much, to the point where I can forgive him for the error he made against Sheffield United in the home game.
You can really tell Liam has taken to Leeds and the fans this season. He puts his body on the line and he plays with heart, which is something always required of a Leeds United captain. It is no surprise he has captained Leeds for over 100 games, an incredible achievement. I couldn't think of a better captain to lead us in to the promised land of the Premier League (fingers crossed).
Kalvin Phillips
With Eunan O'kane seeming to have forgotten how to play football last season, and, our favourite teenager who never gave the ball away, Ronaldo Viera deciding to take his career to Italy, we had a massive centre-defensive midfield issue. With Adam Forshaw getting injured pre-season too, in stepped our Yorkshire Pirlo, Kalvin Phillips. Last season I could never really put my finger on what type of midfielder he was. For example, he showed qualities of a good CDM (Centre Defensive Midfielder) but the likes of Christiansen opted to play him further up the pitch. Phillips did chip in with a few goals, but it always felt like his talent wasn't best used there.
The genius that is Marcelo Bielsa obviously has worked a lot with Phillips and developed him into the actual beast he is. This season he has shown composure on the ball, tenacity to break down opposition play, and who can forget that 100th minute equaliser at Boro. It saddens me to say this, but I feel even if Leeds don't go to the Premier League next season, Kalvin definitely will be.
Phillips has been one of the best products of the academy in recent years, the likes of Byram, Taylor, Mowatt and Cook received a lot of praise, but they never really played under much pressure for Leeds, we were always settling for mid-table mediocrity, they weren't really in promotion pushes. Whereas Kalvin so far has dealt with the pressure that this season has thrown at him. Like Cooper, I was not surprised to see him in the Championship Team of the Season. He's magic you know...
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