Bielsa did honourable thing against Villa but should he have?

The ends are often said to justify the means. However, that appears not to be the case with Marcelo Bielsa. The Argentine coach elected to, in the Warm-Up's mind, do the honourable thing when his Leeds side took the lead in controversial fashion against Aston Villa in the Championship on Sunday. However, was it the right decision?

The Elland Road club went 1-0 up when Mateusz Klich scored with Jonathan Kodjia down injured – the Villa players were left enraged by a sense of injustice. However, to the letter of the law, seeing as Kodjia’s injury appeared not to be head-related, Bielsa’s men had only breached an unwritten law of sportsmanship, both sets of players should have played to the referee Stuart Attwell’s whistle. Professional sport is ruthless, it has to be.

To the Warm-Up’s mind Leeds took advantage of Villa’s naivety; was it fair? no, but elite sport rarely is. Furthermore it was just about within the letter of the law.

A win for Leeds would have seen them cling on to the slim chance of automatic promotion to the Premier League, yet with that at stake, Bielsa took the remarkable decision to instruct his players to allow Villa to level the match up unopposed.

However, as Arsene Wenger intimated in his role as an analyst on beIN SPORTS, while it was remarkable from Bielsa, Leeds were only guilty of taking advantage of Villa not following the rules.

"I would like to say thank you to the manager of Leeds, Marcelo Beisla," began Wenger.

"Leeds took advantage of it and that is where they were guilty.

"It is a kind of fair play that is usually on the football pitch. Only the ref can stop the game but it's remarkable from Marcelo Bielsa."

Bielsa has received plaudits aplenty for the gesture, with the 63-year-old saying post-match that English sportsmanship dictated that he had to ‘give the goal back’ - indicating that if the incident did not happen in England he may not have instructed his players to allow Villa to score.

Bielsa’s sportsmanship is to be applauded but this whole kerfuffle would be moot had Villa’s players just played on – the Warm-Up imagines that, Fabian Delph, star of reality TV show All or Nothing: Manchester City was absolutely raging at the lack of attention to the basics of football and, if he were watching was probably roaring ‘it’s the basics of football. Basics. It’s the basics’ at his television.

It looks increasingly like the sides that finish third and fourth in the Premier League this season will get there by the default of the guffness of those around them rather than their own excellence. The weekend started with Tottenham losing, and finished with Arsenal losing and Chelsea and Manchester United drawing, leaving Spurs and Chelsea in the driving seat for a spot in next season's Champions League.

Each of the four sides competing for the two available top four spots have been pretty dreadful in their own way at different points of the season. However, none of those clubs can really afford to not be playing Champions League football. Therefore, expect fairly vast overhauls at each of them come the summer.

However, there could be another side who could be a contender for the Champions League spots next season - and that is one Leicester City. Yup, heard it here first, people (well, you might have heard it somewhere else, but anyway...). They have relatively quietly put together an exciting, youthful squad (perhaps even better than the one that won the league in 2016) and have in Brendan Rodgers a manager who knows his way around the top flight of English football.

So, should the aforementioned overhauls either fail to happen or be poorly executed then the Foxes are well placed to step up should any of the above teams be so lax again next season.

There has been much debate regarding the PFA awards this season. However, Dutch duo Virgil van Dijk and Vivianne Miedema are, to the Warm-Up’s mind, fully deserving recipients of the awards, as both have had transformative effects on their side’s performance.

Van Dijk has shored up what was a pretty porous Liverpool defence that has now become the league’s most frugal while Miedema has scored 22 goals in 19 games and also contributed 11 assists as Arsenal won a first league title since 2012. The awards are a recognition of personal excellence but in both cases that personal excellence has pushed their club on to further success and that makes them this year's standout candidates.

Don't get the Warm-Up started on the Young Payer of the Year age qualification debacle though.

Real Madrid’s pretty heinous season continued unabated over the weekend when they were beaten 1-0 by Rayo Vallecano. Real boss Zidane did not hold back post-match.

It is going to be a long way back for Madrid, and a journey made all the more difficult by the fact that their perennial rivals Barcelona claimed an eighth Liga title in 11 years, and are still in with a shout of winning the treble.

What a save this was from Sandra Panos as Barcelona beat Bayern Munich 1-0, securing a 2-0 win on aggregate, to progress the Champions League final against Lyon.

Whatever the ins and outs of the lead up to this incident between Neymar and a spectator, this is not a good look after his side had lost the French Cup final to Rennes on penalties.

Arsene Wenger was full of praise for Bielsa, see above, and it is little wonder why with the former Arsenal manger having been in a similar position back during the 1998-99 season.

The man who put the sportsmanship in sports writing, Nick Miller will take you through the ongoings in European football on Monday, with fixtures in Liga and Serie A.

And for those crossover fans amongst you, there is plenty of high-quality, tense snooker available on the channel.