Patrick Bamford has started this season in red-hot form.
The Leeds striker has scored in each of the Whites’ first three games of the season, helping his team on their way to six points so far.
However, despite Bamford’s incredible beginning, there is a feeling of inevitability that he won’t be holding down his starting role for the entire season, with £27m signing Rodrigo waiting in the wings.
The Spain international does have a better CV than Bamford, having played for both Benfica and Valencia, compared to Bamford’s experience with the likes of Derby County and Middlesbrough, but again, you can’t argue with results on the pitch, and Bamford is providing them.
Bielsa has a massive selection headache in terms of how to keep everyone happy, with Bamford barely putting a foot wrong this season, and a club-record signing having to be played slightly out of position or left on the bench.
This isn’t a new issue for Bielsa, this time last year Eddie Nketiah was scoring at an incredible rate in his substitute appearances, while Bamford was faltering on the pitch, but despite the Arsenal man’s incredible form, he couldn’t force his manager’s hand to give him a starting spot.
Nketiah ended up starting just two games for Leeds before heading back to his parent club in January, and while that didn’t prove to be a huge loss, the stakes are much higher when you’re dealing with a £27m international footballer who recently scored 59 goals and provided 41 assists in 220 Valencia appearances and was labelled as “extraordinary” by Quique Setien.
Of course, it’s still early days, and Bielsa often takes a while to introduce new signings as they take a while to get up to speed with his intense training regimes, but the fact still remains that the same debates that were cropping up last year are once again rearing their heads.
Having two quality strikers that you need to rotate is always quite a nice dilemma to have, but it is a dilemma nonetheless, and if Bielsa doesn’t strike the right balance, it could all end in tears again, just as it did with Nketiah.
In other news, one potential Leeds signing could be an immediate fan favourite.
