Leeds United supporters drawn to social media since Christmas will be familiar with a meme from Twin Peaks featuring ‘The Giant’ whispering chillingly to Special Agent Dale Cooper: “It is happening again.” To anyone delighting in Leeds" run of four defeats and a draw in their past six matches, the gif neatly captures the sense that this year"s promotion race is headed in the same direction as last season’s melodramatic collapse. From the goalkeeper to the centre-forward, these are the problems Leeds must address. Replace calamity Kiko with Illan Meslier When Leeds signed Kiko Casilla from Real Madrid in January 2019, he was supposed to be the finishing touch. His pedigree gave him the right to be the squad’s highest earner - he has a Spain cap, was trusted by Zinedine Zidane when called up to start for Real 25 times in La Liga over three seasons and had earned his transfer to the Bernabeu with impressive displays for Espanyol for two years. He is tall, normally seems far more assured with his feet in the Spanish fashion than the typical British academy graduate and was brought in because of his confidence, which Leeds hoped would prove infectious, and his ability to instigate attacks with his range of passing. It is why they gave him a 4½-year contract. Instead poor communication and a messianic belief that he has to rush out of position to save the day cost Leeds goals against Ipswich Town at the end of last season and, crucially, Derby’s first in the second leg of the play-off semi-final which precipitated 15 minutes of panic from which they never recovered. Against Sheffield Wednesday at home he let in an 87th-minute shot at the near post which sparked the run of four defeats in five games that defeathered their plump, 11-point cushion to third place. And in the past three games he has air-punched on the line at a corner, like an actuary at a Bon Jovi gig, and let the ball dip under the bar against Wigan; let Sammy Ameobi’s shot sneak in at the near post at Nottingham Forest; and slipped having miscontrolled a horizontal pass across his six-yard box at Griffin Park to allow Said Benrahma a tap-in. In their past 10 games in the Championship, Leeds rank 24th in errors leading to goals, 24th equal in clean sheets, 23rd in save percentage and 22nd equal in goals conceded. Leeds have the 19-year-old France Under-20 keeper Illan Meslier as back-up and he impressed with his distribution in the FA Cup tie against Arsenal at the Emirates. Leeds obviously rate him highly enough not to have introduced a keeper with more experience should Casilla’s forthcoming tribunal on a charge of racial abuse lead to a ban. Now it is evident that Meslier’s passing and positioning are more than adequate for the way Leeds play, what have they to lose by giving him a game? He could chuck one in against Bristol City on Saturday and essentially do no worse than Casilla. Turn chances into goals Leeds United’s perennial weakness under Bielsa — converting chances into goals — is worse this season. Last season’s expected goals (xG) Championship table would have had Leeds beating Sheffield United to the title with the champions Norwich in third. Bielsa"s team led the league for chances created and do so again this season but when their centre-forward and leading scorer Patrick Bamford is compared with the leading strikers in the division, there is a clear discrepancy. The xG column in the table below shows those strikers who are fine finishers (with a positive difference of 1 or above), and those who are not as prolific as they should be given the quality of the chances created for them (with a score of less than -1). Bamford’s -9.09 — meaning that he should have scored nine more goals than the 12 he has managed — illustrates where Leeds are lacking. But it is not just Bamford. Bielsa always stresses that it is Bamford’s movement and ability to occupy defenders with his runs into the inside-forward channels and out to the flanks that is crucial to his attacking philosophy of overloading defenders and manipulating space. It is why Eddie Nketiah was not used more. He is right to say that just as a team cannot disown its goalkeeper for making one mistake (five must be more persuasive), it cannot solely blame the central striker for missing chances. This table shows that others, too, are culpable. The manager always says that the one thing he does not, indeed actually cannot, coach is finishing. Perhaps it is time to find a specialist finishing coach who could try to prove him wrong. Embrace the 46 cup finals Leeds fans sing about their defeats as cup final victories for the opposition and there is a sense, borne out by Nottingham Forest fan and England fast bowler Stuart Broad following their defeat by Charlton on Tuesday night, that teams and their supporters relish beating Leeds United more than merely winning three points warrants. There is nothing they can do about teams wanting to beat them more than anyone else and while it is impossible to prove definitively that teams raise their game against Leeds it is instructive to see what happened to the those who have beaten them this season in their following matches, as this table shows. Improve player rotation It is simplistic to accuse Bielsa’s teams of burning out as if it’s a common and natural corollary of the intensity he demands. They were as vibrant in their 47th league match of last season, the 1-0 play-off victory at Pride Park, as they were in the first. What contributes to that perception is his preference for a smaller squad. Seven players started more than 38 league games last season - only injury made the number so low - while seven have started more than 28 of 32 so far this season. While it was noticeable at QPR how slight physically they looked up against players such as Geoff Cameron and Lee Wallace — the temptation to adopt Tony Hancock’s cry at The Reunion Party, “you’re not a squirrel man, have a sandwich” at some of them was all but overwhelming — they were as robust and resilient as Brentford on Tuesday night. Losing Adam Forshaw for the season and Tyler Roberts" susceptibility to injuries has left the manager with limited options but new signing Ian Poveda, Jamie Shackleton, Barry Douglas and Gaetano Berardi could all be given more game time over the next few fixtures, particularly when they play Reading, Middlesbrough and Hull in seven days at the end of the month and Cardiff, Fulham and Luton over six days in the middle of March. Above all, despite Bielsa"s doctrine, the director of football, Victor Orta must persuade him if they do go up that the injury problems that have dogged them for two seasons demands a bigger squad next season. They cannot cope in the Premier League with such thin playing resources. But, above all, believe in Bielsa The other key theme of the recent slump has been to trot out the old, famously misattributed quotation about madness which is deemed appropriate for old ‘El Loco’ Bielsa: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” A more fitting definition would be that insanity is expecting anyone other than Bielsa to have these players anywhere close to promotion or anyone else being able to come in now and get more out of them in the run-in, given that each has been remorselessly drilled in exactly this system of play. The signing of the striker Jean-Kevín Augustn on loan from Red Bull Leipzig, the way Leeds United defended shrewdly at Brentford to deny Watkins and Mbeumo any significant chances, Kalvin Phillips’ form on his return from suspension, the fact that they are still in second place and after Saturday have only one more match against a top-seven team in their 13-match run-in, ought to give them confidence.