QPR vs Leeds: Marcelo Bielsa admits his side deserved to lose and blames FA Cup exit on bad decisions

Leeds have lost three in a row in all competitions, but Bielsa took particular exception to this defeat

Marcelo Bielsa admitted that his Leeds United team deserved their 2-1 defeat in the FA Cup third round game at Queens Park Rangers this evening. Bielsa took an experienced defence to Loftus Road and they were eventually punished, and the legendary coach accepted afterwards that his team had not deserved to go through.

“I think we deserved to lose,” Bielsa said afterwards. “We could not find solutions for the set pieces. And we took decisions that were not useful for us and we did not need to make these kinds of decisions.”

Leeds have now lost three in a row in all competitions after losing in the Championship 2-0 to Hull City and 4-2 to Nottingham Forest in recent days. But Bielsa is insistent that in those two matches Leeds did not deserve to lose, and were unlucky to do so. Today’s performance, however, he viewed as worse than those. And he explained in detail after today’s game why that was.

“I analysed the last two games before this one [Hull and Nottingham Forest] and I reached some conclusions,” he said. “From my point of view, the result was not good, but the performance was good. The result of the game, the goals you score and you concede, the method to evaluate the game is clear.

“But when you have to explain what you deserve and do not deserve, the path is little bit more complicated. In the last two Championship games, I am convinced not only that we did not deserve to lose, but that we deserved to win. But it today’s game, we made too many mistakes. When you make a mistake during a game, but generally the performance is good, that is what happened against Forest. We value positively the performance.”

“In today’s game, we made too many mistakes. We cannot say we did too many good things. In the last two Championship games, in spite of the mistakes we made, the positive things we realised made us think we deserved to win. And I cannot say the same thing for today’s game.”

Even though Leeds are now on a bad run they are still on top of the table, with a huge game against Derby County coming up on Friday night, and a chance to secure their place at top of the Championship. Asked whether he would have to lift the players ahead of the defeats, Bielsa insisted that his players would stay motivated by the size of the task.

“The first thing we do is evaluate if we deserve to lose the three games. The second thing we do is to re-evaluate the positive things and negative things that we have done. We need to correct the negative things, and we underline the positive ones. The game next Friday is by itself very important. I think the mental state of our players will be more linked to the future than to the past.”