Stoke City boss Nathan Jones has revealed that he went with a different formation to catch Leeds United and Marcelo Bielsa off guard at the bet365 Stadium, after the Potters scored a key win.
Leeds were beaten 2-1 by Stoke as goals from Sam Clucas and Joe Allen put the Potters in a commanding position before Ezgjan Alioski scored late in injury time to reduce the deficit.
Bielsa has made the headlines in the last week or so for his rigorous analysis of opposition teams, which included spying on them to get more information.
Stoke went with a 3-5-2 formation and ditched the diamond in midfield that Jones had used in his first two games in charge of the club.
Jones revealed in his post match press conference that the three at the back formation was used to surprise Bielsa.
The Welshman also praised the players for being on their game straight away despite the eleventh-hour decision to change the set-up.
"It’s been well publicised that Marcelo is well drilled in our usual formation, so we thought we might give him a surprise", Jones said.
"We felt that with their threats they’ve got and with no time to work with them really, so to give us the best platform to win a football match we needed to be tactically right on it and we were.
"We didn’t have much time to work on it, only Friday, but the players took it on board and let’s be honest, we’ve got some good players here who can take it on board."
With the result against Leeds, Stoke City ended a run of four games without a win in the Championship.
