Marcelo Bielsa reacts to Patrick Bamford’s performance against Western Sydney

Leeds United managed Marcelo Bielsa has continued to back Patrick Bamford despite the striker’s woes in pre-season. The former Chelsea graduate struggled to find the net during the club’s pre-season tour of Australia and he was particularly poor against Western Sydney Wanderers, where he was handed with a number of clear-cut chances.

Speaking to Leeds Live, Bielsa acknowledged that Bamford is not going through the best of times in the club’s shirt but hopefully, he can finally convert the chances into goals sooner rather than later, he said: “For a striker it is very important they create chances. At the same time, for his confidence it is important he finally finishes these chances and scores. One of the first steps for a forward is it is important he creates a chance and makes steps in his performance in the pre-season and finally he scores goals.”

Leeds tackled Western Sydney Wanderers for the first game at the Bankwest Stadium where Mateusz Bogusz found the opener. Thereafter, Kwame Yeboah equalised the proceedings for the Australian outfit but Leeds managed to leave Down Under with the victory after Pablo Hernandez came up with a stunning wonder goal during the dying minutes of the friendly.

Still, the Yorkshire outfit could have won the game in a much comfortable fashion, had Bamford converted the chances up for grabs. Meanwhile, Leeds have been touted as the favourites to seal promotion to the Premier League in 12 months’ time and it will be interesting to see whether they can build upon the form displayed from the previous campaign.

Bielsa’s side had been on course to secure automatic promotion from the Championship last term but a poor run during the final four games meant that they dropped to third on the table. Ultimately, they could not secure promotion through the playoffs after a 4-3 aggregate defeat to Derby County at the semi-final stage.