Marcelo Bielsa admitted Rovers made changes he wasn’t expecting – as midfielder Mateusz Klich reflected on an ‘important victory’ for his side.

Bielsa’s side moved one step closer to promotion to the Premier League, inflicting a third successive defeat on Rovers whose play-off ambitions appear to be over.

Klich set up the opening goal for Patrick Bamford before a fine Kalvin Phillips free kick doubled the lead before the break.

And the Polish midfield restored the two goal advantage for Leeds after Armstrong scored a free kick of his own, to take his goal tally to 14 in what is becoming an increasingly productive campaign.

Rovers had started each of their previous three matches since lockdown in a 4-3-3 formation, with Lewis Holtby as the most advanced attacker.

However, it was back to a 4-2-3-1 for Rovers against Leeds, something Bielsa wasn’t expecting.

“It’s very difficult to imagine what kind of match we were going to have. The opponent was playing with different shapes,” he said.

“They made some modifications that we didn’t expect. Their number nine as a right winger, eight as a left winger, seven as a forward, that was new from their manager.”

Bielsa was an animatic figure on the touchline, despite his side being in control for large portions of the match.

However, the Argentine says the position his team find themselves in, closing in on promotion with five games to go, he admits it can be a nerve-wracking time.

He added: “Yes, every match in this period is very important, and every distraction we pay for that, so we must keep focused on the match.”

Klich scored at Ewood Park when the sides last met in October 2017, a game Rovers won 2-1.

However, his strike this time put the game beyond Rovers, his strike coming just moments after Armstrong had pulled a goal back.

And Klich admits that a difficult game, in testing conditions, made for a satisfactory afternoon’s work.

“It was a very important victory,” he said.

“If Blackburn had won, they could have potentially think about reaching the play-offs and we wanted to win as our goal is to win every game until the end of the season and not to look down on other teams.

“We knew it was going to be hard and the conditions weren’t great, so we were happy with the win.

“In this league, every team who scores early is happy, because it is so difficult to score a goal.

“Teams defend well and the first goal is very important in this league and it was good we scored early, because it was a tough game.”