West Bromwich Albion make the trip to Elland Road to face fellow promotion hopefuls Leeds United later this evening.
With Leeds causing huge controversy the other month when a member of their staff was found outside of Derby County’s training ground, in an attempt to spy on their training session ahead of that Championship clash, Leeds manager Marcelo Bielsa outlined the way he goes about his homework in an extraordinary press conference and even though he didn’t feel he had done anything wrong, he offered his apologies.
As the fallout continued, amongst many unproven claims, Leeds were recently fined £200,000 for a breach of good faith in effect, and the topic came up as head coach Darren Moore met with the press, and he had a classy answer when it came to the saga.
Speaking to the Birmingham Mail he explained his initial impressions of the Argentine from the meeting earlier in the season.
“Wonderful, complimentary, gentleman. Took the defeat honourable, really really was. He’s an excellent manager, his track record speaks for itself, his experience speaks for itself and you know to have him here in our game, in the English game, is wonderful because it shows his appetite and the respect for the division, the type of calibre of manager that he is so it’s wonderful and again we look forward to seeing him tomorrow evening as both teams contest again for those three points.”
Adding.
“I didn’t look too much into it, because at the end of the day it happens, the league authorities have dealt with it and we move on. It was a crazy one because we were sort of alarmed by it is but as I said you know it’s come out and he’s clearly apologised. I appreciate the way he was honest and open and we put it to bed now that it has been dealt with and we move on. I’ve loved the way he’s honest I think that’s fantastic, I loved the way he went about it, he’s accepted the punishment and we understand it and we move on. But we can’t let one isolated incident corrode him because he’s a wonderful, excellent man he’s had a wonderful career, his career speaks for itself. It shows wonderful temperament by him to come into our division and showing the respect that we’ve got for him to come over here and manage and coach and bring out a brand and a style here, it shows wonderful appetite by him.”
The whole issue left a sour taste in the mouth really as it’s not the done thing, yet there are plenty of stories of others doing exactly the same thing that came out, so calls for a points deduction when no actual rule was broken were a little far fetched.
Having taken the win earlier in the campaign though, whilst Moore’s words won’t change anything about tonight, making it six from six would be perfect punishment from our point of view.
