Harry Hill, Geordie Nosferatu, Lost Slovenian Tourist, Dour Yorkshire Bloke, Bond Villain, Bloated Carbuncle, Karen Matthews, Squeaky Viking, Dour Yorkshire Bloke #2.

Our last nine managers, ladies and gentlemen, all (well, most) of whom came to Leeds as respected professionals. If they were lucky, they got away with a few months of light-hearted banter from the fans before being dumped outside with ‘nice but inept’ stamped on their forehead, and a six-figure settlement in their pocket. The less fortunate were sucked into the machine and shredded.

The man in charge right now seems unexpectedly resistant to satire. He sat on a bucket. Bucket sales rose 500% in West Yorkshire. He gave a press conference in broken English. When various journalists described the interview as ‘weird’ and ‘awkward’, Leeds fans rose as one in defence of him. Marcelo Bielsa can do no wrong right now. You get the feeling that if the Sky cameras caught him digging around in his ear (as happened once at Marseille) the result would be a Mexican wave of earwax mining in the John Charles Stand. We’re dancing to Bielsa’s tune now.

When Paul Heckingbottom had the temerity to select Jay-Roy Grot and Caleb Ekuban ahead of Saiz, Alioski and Lasogga for what amounted to a dead rubber against Preston, the club Twitter account was deluged with anti-hilarious variations of ‘LOOOOOOL WHERES THE REAL TEAM? (laughing face emoji, #ortaout).’ When Bielsa sent us out for a pre-season game at York with no centre backs whatsoever, the response was a more considered ‘I hope he knows what he’s doing’.

Bielsa wields an authority quite unlike any Leeds manager of the last 25 years, and (as yet) it has rendered him completely immune to criticism, not least because in order to criticise his preferred style it is necessary to first understand a system that is considerably more complex than ‘four-four-fucking-two’. It’s easy to dismiss a manager as clueless when his experience amounts to little more than a stop-gap role at Forest Green. It becomes more difficult when he’s worshipped throughout South America, has a stadium in Rosario bearing his name, and masterminded a glorious whupping of Manchester United at Old Trafford. A record like that tends to make people overlook or even embrace little idiosyncrasies like spending matches squatting on a bucket, or bearing a passing resemblance to Roz from Monsters Inc.

Possibly the most disconcerting thing about Bielsa is how utterly unmoved he seems by the uproar he’s causing in the Championship. The name ‘El Loco’ conjures up images of a masked gunslinger, cackling maniacally amid a shower of bullets, lobbing the occasional grenade for good measure. Instead Bielsa seems possessed by a furious kind of sanity, one that seems impervious even to the euphoria of seeing his team score. At the time of writing we’re yet to see what he does when we lose, or even go behind in a match, and I can’t be the only one feeling a little nervous at the prospect.

Leeds managers usually spend their tenure with a sword dangling above their head, fully at the mercy of a vocal fanbase and a capricious owner, and when their early promise runs out a P45 swiftly follows. Those days appear to be over, not least because, with Bielsa earning a reported £4m a year, it’ll probably be cheaper to buy a whole new defence than to get shot of him. This time we’re the ones walking on eggshells, hoping that we don’t see a repeat of Bielsa’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it spell at Lazio, who kept him happy for a grand total of 48 hours before El Loco stormed out, citing broken promises over transfers. Abel Hernandez, Matej Vydra and Florian Jozefzoon all took turns to waste our time with demands for silly money, giving rise to anxiety within the support that reached the early stages of panic before the signing of Barry Douglas came as a welcome relief and gave us all some assurance that Bielsa might still be here come the first game of the season. Make no mistake, the balance of power has shifted. The sword’s still there, but now it’s being brandished at us.

All these factors combine to make this the most exciting time to be a Leeds fan in nearly two decades. We could ride this feeling all the way to the promised land, or it could detonate in an instant and leave us in the charred wreckage. Either way, can we please put an end to the myth that Andrea Radrizzani lacks the ambition required to take us forward — this is a gloriously insane appointment and for Radz to have the guts to pursue it, let alone the negotiating punch to realise it, speaks volumes about where he sees this club’s long-term future. We may never see another managerial appointment quite like this one, and if you’re not savouring every moment of it then you’re doing football wrong.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to replace my office chair with a bright blue bucket and spend the day glowering impassively at my emails. Unless, by the time this goes to print, he’s gone and been replaced by Dour Yorkshire Bloke #3. You know who I mean. ◉

(This article was published in TSB 2018/19 issue 02 and is free to read as part of TSB Goes Latin.)