There are recent similarities between Wolves and Leeds; a continental manager implementing a particular way of playing to dominate the Championship, before continuing that into the Premier League. While Nuno and Marcelo Bielsa have taken slightly different approaches this season, the outcomes have not been massively dissimilar:
You can see the difference in approaches:
Whereas Leeds have taken some hammerings and given out some beatings, we have been a lot more consistent. Only five of our games have seen a team win by two or more goals. Leeds have managed this on ten occasions.
They have had a slight dip in recent weeks though, perhaps being slightly fortunate to take all three points in matches against Newcastle and Leicester:
It absolutely goes without saying that Leeds are better in attack than we are:
Interestingly, this has taken something of a dip in recent weeks. They are not creating chances at the rate that they have done previously:
Patrick Bamford has perhaps moved onto the England squad's fringes; he has the highest non-penalty expected goals in the league this season, while only Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Son Heung-min have more non-penalty goals this season. Leeds are somewhat reliant on Bamford for goals, but we will need to be wary of Jack Harrison (4.5 NPxG), Rodrigo (3.7 NPxG) and Raphael (3.8 NPxG) breaking from deep.
At the other end of the pitch, they are less good. They have a defence that should be relegation, not pushing for the top half:
Saying that, there has been evidence that the defence is starting to improve - it’s still not ideal to be conceding 1.5 goals worth of chances a match, but it does show some improvement:
If we look at home/away form, it suggests a reasonably close game:
It could well end up being the classic game of attack v defence. But, I hope we don’t forget that Leeds are incredibly open in defence; most good teams either give up lots of shots or good quality shots. Leeds give up both - we must be in a position to take advantage of this.