Former Leeds manager Jesse Marsch told the club they should have kept Marcelo Bielsa in charge when they originally tried to appoint him.
Marsch replaced Bielsa after a spell at RB Leipzig but was unable to prevent their relegation when he was sacked last year.
Bielsa had been the man to take the club into the Premier League and the legendary manager was seen as a hero for his achievement.
Speaking to William Hill, Marsch admitted that he suggested Leeds should stick with the Argentine.
He said: “When I went to Leeds, my analysts told me that within three years the club had an 84% chance of being relegated – the club knew that too. The Brightons and the Brentfords of the world are very unique, just look at Leicester. I knew when I went there that I was going into the lions’ den. I went because I liked the people at the club, and I believed that we had symmetry in the ways we thought about the game.
“I felt like Leeds was a club with a big heart, but I knew it was going to be a massive challenge. I didn’t even want to take the job at first. When they called me, I pleaded with them to keep Marcelo Bielsa. They just got to the point where they felt that they had to make a change.”
However, the American conceded that the players did look to be fatigued by the demands of Bielsa.
He added: “Normally when you watch players on television, they look like strong men in the right physical environment, but when you meet them in person you see that they’re still kids and young men at heart – Leeds was the opposite.
“When I arrived the players looked gaunt, tired and defeated. They looked like a group that was going to need a lot of help for them to be what I wanted them to be. The first feeling I had when I first met them was that it was going to be a much more difficult task than I had imagined.”