Biesla 'Spies' The 'Antonio Job'

It is common knowledge that Leeds United's manager, Marcelo Biesla, is a stickler for his pre-planning and training specifically tailored against his team's next opponents, and apparently he has a 'cunning' plan set out in order to combat the attacking prowess of Michail Antonio, the scourge of many Barclays Premier League defenders.

When West Ham faced Aston Villa recently, David Moyes evolved a plan in order to cope with the undoubted talents of Jack Grealish, this involved Vlad 'the impaler' Coufal and Ryan Fredericks 'doing a number' on Villa's talisman, and to some degree they were successful, in fact Grealish was forced to swap sides of the pitch even to get a sniff of the ball in the match!

It is anticipated that Bielsa will task two of his defenders to mount a constant blockade against the Hammers striker, however Antonio, despite his troublesome hamstrings, is not Jack Grealish, each has their own unique abilities, but Antonio's physical presence is awkward and intimidating to opposition players, unlike Grealish, who has unfortunately earned the 'Jack Squealish' nickname due to his propensity for hitting the deck and rolling around after the slightest of contact, Antonio does NOT fall over.

In fact Big Mich is incredibly hard to push off balance, or to be prevented from retaining possession of the ball as a direct result of his strength and determination. Should Biesla choose to 'double up' on Antonio, which is a likely conclusion, he will do so at the risk of exposing the rest of the team that isn't on 'Ant duty', players like Jesse Lingard, Tomas Soucek, Jarrod Bowen and Said Berahma are more than capable of exploiting the gaps left in the oppositions defence.

With all that said, tonight's game will most definitely be no walk over, to the neutral it will probably be very entertaining, but it will be a tense affair, it is to be hoped that the 'luxury' of having nine days off won't have had a detrimental effect on the team, and hopefully they will return invigorated by the break that had been afforded them due to the weird and wonderful scheduling of games. - Ed