Chelsea, Leeds, Spygate, and the chickens coming home to roost

Chelsea and Leeds is a rivalry reborn this weekend. Spygate will add a modern twist to ensure fans old and young both have their investment.

Chelsea versus Leeds is supposed to be a rivalry on par with Tottenham and Arsenal. Maybe even more so. For many older fans, it still will be. Memories of hotly contested FA Cup finals and more will seem fresh in the eyes of the pre Roman Abramovich fan.

Of course, rivalries also have a tendency to peter out when the two teams spend so long in separate divisions. Like Fulham, a gap in matches has dulled the rivalry on the Blues side as the team has simply moved on to bigger things. It will still be everything for Leeds fans finally back in the Premier League, but the younger Chelsea fan may not be too bothered.

For that, there is Spygate. Frank Lampard and Marcelo Bielsa have a history. Lampard prevented Bielsa from getting his promotion into the Premier League and then moved on to Chelsea. Bielsa, without Lampard to stop him (and with a very long rest midseason) got into the Premier League. Now Bielsa is getting plaudits erring towards the ridiculous such as a world coach of the year nomination. Forgotten in all of this is his role in Spygate and shaping Lampard’s first managerial rivalry.

It was written about when it happened but a quick recap is in order. Derby County caught a Leeds United employee spying on their training ahead of a match between the two sides. Bielsa quickly admitted fault. The media turned themselves over trying to decide what to do. Unsportsmanlike? Absolutely. But the “that’s how we did it in Argentina” excuse was sticking too.

Eventually, Bielsa held another press conference. He revealed detail after detail about Lampard’s side to the public. Of course, it wasn’t really anything every team wouldn’t have already, despite what the public may have thought. Bielsa ended that presser by saying something along the lines of he didn’t need to spy on Lampard’s Derby to know all about them.

Not asked afterwards was “well then why did you spy at all?”. Many in the media and the fanbases got so caught up in this behind the scenes view of things at every club that they completely forgot anything wrong was done at all. Bielsa was fined and overall, Lampard was made out to be whiny about the whole thing. He had been wronged and Bielsa had flipped the narrative through PR.

Lampard did get some revenge by keeping Leeds in the Championship, but that will not have satisfied Lampard given his side also failed to get promoted. Bielsa kicked about for another year in the league before finally getting promoted. The famous “Bielsa burnout” did not come to pass, in large part because the Covid break gave the players enough time off not to fall to pieces when play resumed.

Now Bielsa is in the Premier League and getting plaudits again, including that ridiculous world coach of the year nomination for doing what literally every Championship turned Premier League manager does yearly. Bielsa is praised almost on the same breath as his apprentice Pep Guardiola. Bielsa’s influence on the game as a whole has primarily been about influencing other managers, not about what he has achieved himself.

For Lampard, that praise of Bielsa must surely be irksome. Bielsa practically got away with cheating by saying he didn’t need to cheat to get what he needed but did it anyways. That’s like clearing someone of stealing a car because they had already taken the keys.

Furthermore, it seems as though Lampard is always fighting an uphill narrative battle. Chelsea sits high in the table, but few in the media are banging the title race drum too loudly. Few are praising Lampard for the work he’s done at Chelsea. Yet with Bielsa, the praise can’t stop coming for a team that got promoted just like every other team that got promoted in history. They aren’t even really surpassing the stuff Wolves or Sheffield United did in the last two years.

All of that should give the newer fans enough appreciation for this rivalry. Bielsa is treated as a master when he might really be the man behind the curtain. Lampard’s Chelsea has a chance to show that to the world, if they’ll listen, and everyone best believe this will be the win Lampard wants most as Chelsea boss.