"Had to ring up Frank Lampard" - Leeds United: Patrick Bamford makes Marcelo Bielsa, Spygate revelation | OneFootball

The old Leeds boss certainly used some interesting methods, to say the least.

Leeds United striker Patrick Bamford has shed more light on the club's spygate scandal.

In February 2019, Leeds were handed a £200,000 fine and were given a "severe reprimand" by the EFL, as per The Guardian, after an investigation into the club spying on other clubs had concluded.

The manager at the time, Marcelo Bielsa, had admitted to sending spies to watch Derby County.

His side beat Frank Lampard's Rams 2-0 and moved five points clear at the top of the table, but the Argentine revealed after the game that a member of United's staff had been watching Derby train ahead of the fixture.

Lampard certainly didn't seem too happy with it after the match, but they got their own back later in the season when they knocked Leeds out of the play-offs at Elland Road.

Now, more than five years on from the incident, Bamford has shed more light on what was going on at Thorp Arch at the time.

Patrick Bamford reveals more details about Leeds United's spygate scandal

The now 31-year-old, who scored nine goals in the aforementioned 2018/19 second tier campaign, has claimed that Bielsa would have the opposition's team right on the day before games "99 percent," of the time.

However, he did add that he wasn't sure whether this was the only time the boss had employed these sneaky tactics, or whether this was a common occurrence during his time with the Whites.

Speaking on the My Mate's A Footballer podcast about the scandal with co-host Joe Wilkinson, Bamford said: "Yeah, I mean, we as players were like, kind of a little bit like, what kind of thinking is that actually just been made up or has that actually happened?

"So we had to ask about and find out what was actually going on. And I know that, so Jay, who was the head in charge of media at the time. I remember Jay from a chat. I think he had to ring up Frank Lampard and basically try and, like, apologise and try and get Marcelo to apologise to him.

"I don't know the exact ins and outs of the conversation, but I don't think Frank took it too well.

"We actually had a bit of a running joke between the lads at the time, when it came out about Spygate," claimed the Leeds forward. "Obviously we never knew if he'd done it before, or whether that was the first time, or whether that was just the time that we got caught."

Lampard had claimed after the game in which Bielsa admitted to his wrongdoings that someone was in the bushes watching his side prepare before they lost 4-1 to Leeds earlier in the season.

Bamford continued to say: "But I kid you not, every lineup when we're doing the meetings the night before the game, so you don't know the team's lineup, and then we'd get the lineup an hour and a half before the game on the Saturday. It was bang on every time.

"So he'd go, they're going to play thingy up front with thingy, and it would be like, oh, Christ, so you're playing because he's a big lad, so and it would be-

"We'd have 99 percent of the time, he had it bang on... I think it was normal back in either Brazil or Argentina or whatever."

Marcelo Bielsa was bold to think he'd get away with spying

Football clubs nowadays are such tightly run operations. Teams in the Championship, and the above and below divisions, almost all have large training complexes that aren't often of particularly easy access to the public. It's not like previous times when you could walk your dog around the side of a training pitch and not be looked at weird.

In fairness, if someone were to do that, maybe not much would be thought of it. But if you spot somebody hiding in a bush watching you, no matter where you are, suspicions are going to be raised.

It was such a brazen thing for them to do, and to think that they'd be able to get away with it is even worse.