Bielsa will be assured of a place in the hearts of most Leeds fans whatever happens this season

‘How is Jean-Kévin Augustin’s fitness?” Perhaps only Marcelo Bielsa, out of any coach in world football, could have turned that simple inquiry into a 20-minute, almost 1500-word monologue yesterday; an answer so long that the French striker had time to pull a hamstring and still recover before his manager was done.

Bielsa’s response took in not just one man’s fitness but the form of several others, Financial Fair Play, criticism of his use of various loan players at Leeds United, and, just perhaps, some quantum physics and Argentine philosophy, though with his assistant Diego Flores struggling to keep up the translation as Bielsa tapped a table, wagged fingers and aligned recording devices with all the obsessiveness he applies to his tactics, who knows what other