We’ve reached the first international break and two weeks without (proper) football having had a twice weekly hit throughout August. Before the withdrawals set in, it’s time to reflect on the start that we’ve made and have a look at some of the issues that have arisen. 4 points from 5 games…sitting 21st – ready for a season long relegation battle right? Well, we know that the league table can often lie, especially so in such a small sample of games. Instead, we can get a better idea of our performances by having a look at some of the underlying stats.

To do so, we’ll delve into Ben Mayhew‘s expected goal numbers. Overall, we have expected goal totals of 5.9 for and 6.9 against, compared to our actual totals of 5 and 9 respectively. This suggests we’ve been a little unfortunate at both ends of the pitch. Even so, an expected goal difference of -1 puts us 17th in the xG table, which isn’t exactly setting the world alight or meeting Leeds’ expectations. However, when we look at the match by match breakdown, one of these things is not like the others:

QPR 1.7 (+Pen) – 0.3 Leeds

Leeds 1.1 – 1.1 Birmingham

Leeds 1.6 – 1.4 Fulham

Sheff Wed 1.3 – 1.8 Leeds

Nott’m Forest 1.4 – 1.1 Leeds

The QPR was a complete aberration. Truly, truly really bad. However, since then all the games have been relatively even. Against Birmingham and Fulham we had two even games. We were better in patches whilst the opposition dominated other parts. 1 point from these 2 games is just the cookie crumbling against us a little. The two following away games are 2 more relatively tight games, shading the Wednesday one and being shaded in the Forest one. Leaving the QPR game aside (I did some analysis of that game’s problems in this Twitter thread), there’s no need for hysteria around the club. We’re doing OK and whilst we’re not turning up and dominating teams, we are a little unfortunate to be going into the break with just 4 points given these performances. Some of the talk from fans saying that Monk must go is completely fucking nuts, in my opinion. It’s too early to judge what he’s doing and things haven’t really been that bad either.

Now we’ve all calmed down, we can look at some of the things that are going wrong, and some that are going right. On the plus side, we look a threat going forward, we’ve added a heap of attacking players to our ranks this summer and they look pretty good. Marcus Antonsson has very intelligent movement and decent technical ability. Hadi Sacko reminds me of an early Max Gradel, with great pace and skill but a lack of composure and final ball whilst Kemar Roofe has caused problems with his direct running. Pablo Hernandez introduced himself as a complete magician with his debut against Fleetwood, and has since been played out of position (more on this later). On the negatives, we are pretty darn terrible at defending set pieces. We gifted a goal 3 minutes in to QPR, and 2 more against Forest (in a game where we were otherwise the better team) all from corners. I’ll be looking into our set piece defence in more detail in another post.

The other negative has been our ditching of the 4231 formation that Monk used at Swansea and we used in pre-season and the first 2 games. Since the Birmingham game we’ve gone for a 442 formation and I think if we persevere down this route, then we’ll end up not fulfilling the potential of the squad. The home games saw Pablo Hernandez slot into the midfield 2 and whilst this was a great use of his playmaking abilities, we were left horribly exposed on the counter, like this Birmingham goal:

Oh well that’s fine I hear you say, just don’t play Hernandez in central midfield. Since the signing of Bridcutt we haven’t, but then we a different problem: missing his playmaking through the centre of the park. Against Forest we played him on the left, and failed to get the ball into advanced central areas, being consistently forced wide and crossing (which is a low % strategy). This is neatly illustrated by our touch map vs Forest (we’re attacking from right to left):

Yikes, that lack of blue dots in the circled area is exactly why we need to be playing someone in the 10 position, and we have 2 good AMs at the club already in Hernandez and Mowatt, but since we’re trying to shoehorn 2 strikers into the team we play them wide or not at all. The answer my friends is to revert to the 4231 for which we have the requisite players, since that is how we planned to play when making our signings. Let me illustrate the choices for each position:

Now the choices you make will depend on the game. Sometimes we’ll need our 10 to do more defensive work and so pick Mowatt ahead of Hernandez. Sometimes we’ll need pace and movement to expose immobile defenders and pick Antonsson, whilst other times we can use Wood’s height. We’re probably a winger short but if injuries hit we have enough versatility in the full backs to push one forward. We have the squad for 4231 and it provides us with both balance against the counter and solves the Pablo Hernandez problem.

I’m still optimistic about the season, we have both the best squad and best manager in years. The only thing that can screw it up is Cellino’s trigger finger, so let’s not give him any encouragement. MOT