A handful of Leeds supporters have been reacting on social media to a season breakdown statistic shared by LUFC Data, which one fan dubbed ‘very telling’.
The stat in question focused on the amount of games we lost during the 2018/19 Championship season where we enjoyed a 70% or higher share of possession, as the Whites, unfortunately, tasted defeat in seven of the eleven games where we managed such.
Those fixtures include the defeats at home to Wigan Athletic, Birmingham City, Hull City, and Sheffield United, along with loses on the road against the St Andrew’s natives, West Bromwich Albion, and Stoke City.
In contrast, we only managed to win three of the eleven games where we enjoyed a 70% or higher share of possession, with three-points taken against Rotherham United, Blackburn Rovers and Bolton Wanderers, along with a draw at home to Nottingham Forest in October.
One of the worst instances where we failed to win despite dominating the game came in the defeat at home to Wigan, as we fashioned 36 shots on the Latics’ goal, while they only put two on target against us, yet scored both.
The defeat at home to Birmingham also stands out, as we took 17 shots that day compared to four against, but also conceded twice despite only three of the Blues’ shots finding the target.
Not to forget West Brom’s 4-1 win in November, if that’s even possible, as the Baggies enjoyed just 28% of the ball, yet managed to fashion five more shots than us (20 compared to our 15), and scored with 4 of their 6 on target (we managed just three on target).
So when our record in games with 70% possession or higher was shared on Twitter, this is how these Leeds fans reacted…
That would be because we struggled to break down teams that sat back.
— david greenwood (@dgreenwood87) June 12, 2019
Teams hitting us on the counter because of the high press, but the lack of pace we had to defend it. This was very telling against Derby
— Barney ™ (@BarneyStuart21) June 12, 2019
Wouldn’t of mattered had we taken a respectable amount of our chances created ????????♂️
— Lewy Pearce (@LewyPearce) June 12, 2019
Some truly awful finishing last season, that and a mixture of being unlucky. Finishing is probably the hardest thing to coach. Let’s hope we improve on that next season. Need more goals without a doubt.
— Tom Holynski (@ThommHol) June 12, 2019
Yup. We’re at our best when retrieving the ball from fragmented play, and at our worst when we’re trying to pick our way through a team sitting back – especially once Samu left. That will have been noted by the entire league so will be a challenge in 19/20.
— Owen Radford-Lloyd (@tfdefence) June 13, 2019
Those losses where so frustrating. Lapses in concentration leading to errors proved to be a high problem. Really hope bielsa targets this issue to be fixed in preseason
— Robert Giles (@Rob_E_Giles) June 12, 2019
Maybe he should be looking at defenders then and not wingers
— jamie (@jamie11834828) June 12, 2019
Sucker punched on the counter suggests the possession share was consistent throughout the game.
A number of these will be so high as the opposition defending a lead (from set piece) just sat back deep let us have the ball knowing we couldn’t do much with it to break them down.
— Johnboy (@_Johnboy_) June 12, 2019