DEFENCE HOLDS KEY TO WHITES’ PROMOTION PUSH
CAN Leeds clinch the automatic promotion place that so painfully slipped from their grasp last season?
For much of a patchy start, it has looked debatable. The squad remains skeletal, and goals a precious rarity.
Last weekend’s 2-0 victory over QPR marked only the second time since August that Leeds have won by more than a single goal, a situation that frays nerves and invites the sucker punch. It is a significant and exploitable weakness that manager Marcelo Bielsa appears powerless to improve. Last year, those missed chances proved fatal.
The difference this time, however, is a level of defensive solidity that may render that profligacy irrelevant. That is partly down to the signing of Ben White, a central defender of such obvious class than an international future seems certain. Yet it is also the fruit of a year spent learning to press from the front. Bielsa has taken flak for sticking by the misfiring Patrick Bamford, but the striker’s tactical savvy and ability to lead that press is, in Bielsa’s view, the cornerstone of Leeds’ defence. He’s got a point. QPR had scored 24 goals on arrival at Elland Road, fewer than just three other teams in the division. Yet so deftly were they shut down that even mounting attacks appeared beyond their means.
Heading into the weekend, no side in England had conceded fewer goals that Leeds’ eight. Only one – Forest Green – had kept more clean sheets. At the current rate, Bielsa’s men are on course to concede just 25 times this season.
To put that figure in context, no team in Championship history has ever conceded fewer than 30 goals over the course of the season.
And only one team in the last ten years – Middlesbrough in 2015 – has conceded the fewest goals in the league yet failed to win promotion.
Even allowing for the late-season fatigue that will inevitably dent performances, Leeds have given themselves a margin for error that could prove pivotal.