Frank Lampard's honest Marcelo Bielsa verdict as Coventry City boss eyes Leeds United play-off repeat
Coventry boss Frank Lampard is in a similar play-off position as his Derby County side were heading to Leeds United six years ago.
Frank Lampard is hoping to draw inspiration from his dramatic defeat of Marcelo Bielsa's Leeds United this week as Coventry City fight for a play-off final spot.
Lampard’s Coventry head to Sunderland for their semi-final second-leg clash on Tuesday evening with it all to do, having lost the first-leg 2-1 at home on Friday. The fourth-v-fifth-placed clash looked set to end level at the CBS Arena, with second-half goals from Wilson Isidor and Jack Rudoni, until a loose Milan van Ewijk back-pass allowed Elizier Mayenda to win it for the Black Cats.
Coventry now face the difficult task of turning things around on the road but Lampard is no stranger to such drama, having eliminated Leeds in the 2018/19 play-off semi-final as Derby County boss. Bielsa’s Whites walked out at Elland Road with a 1-0 aggregate lead that turned to 2-0 through Stuart Dallas inside 24 minutes, but a chaotic night eventually saw the Rams win 4-2 on the night and 4-3 on aggregate, with red cards for either side and an 85th-minute Jack Marriott winner.
"I guess looking back, it has got to be tactically one of my favourite games that I've coached even to this point because I was going up against Bielsa and a team that I felt were really, really strong," Lampard said ahead of Tuesday’s semi-final second-leg trip to Sunderland. "I don't think they [Leeds] or anybody else really expected us to turn that game around.
"I really enjoyed that for what it meant for the club. It was one of the first main games for me as a coach where I thought: 'I've gone up against a really good coach, tweaked something and the lads did the rest.'"
An already dramatic semi-final was made even more so by what had gone on before, with Leeds infamously fined £200,000 by the EFL after one of Bielsa’s coaches was spotted on a public footpath watching Derby training ahead of their regular-season meeting. Bielsa would pay that fine personally before going on to hold one of the most memorable press conferences anyone can remember, essentially sharing all the information he had on every team across the Championship.
Derby would go on to lose that play-off final against Aston Villa and Lampard was appointed Chelsea manager the following summer, with the Rams falling off a cliff before being relegated two years later. Leeds, meanwhile, retained Bielsa’s services to claim the Championship title a year later, a feat they repeated earlier this month under Daniel Farke.
Lampard and Coventry will be hoping to join Leeds in the Premier League but they are very much second-favourites on Tuesday, with Sunderland battling to find form at the right time. Elsewhere, Sheffield United are 3-0 up against Bristol City going into their semi-final second-leg at Bramall Lane this evening.
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