My fondness for data affords me the occasional piece of content where I suspend rampant, unjustified opinion in favour of cold hard statistics. This is one of those pieces. Are 2015 Leeds better than their 2014 counterpart? Have we turned a corner? Let’s look.

Off the back of a disappointing home match against Brentford (where we abandoned a working system to unsurprisingly discover that 4-4-2 doesn’t quite work), Leeds then defied convention to actually win away at Reading. On a Tuesday night. In that dreadful gold kit. It was, as I termed it, a perfect away performance. So are Leeds United now a more competent footballing side than they were? Let’s look.

Chances created

Scoring goals has been a problem for us, since Doukara and Antenucci’s initial bright start to the campaign, there hasn’t been anyone you’d consider taking up the “I’m going to score all our goals” role. Especially in 4-2-3-1 where Morison leads the line (and does a great job at it), but hasn’t started scoring yet.

2014 – we ranked 22nd in the league for chances created.

2015 – we rank 14th in the league for chances created.

So, compared to our peers we’re creating more chances than we were. This is good.

Defensive errors

Something we’re pretty good at, let’s make the same comparison – where we rank against our peers in 2014 versus 2015.

2014 4th, meaning we had committed the 4th most defensive errors in this period.

2015 18th, meaning there were only 6 teams with fewer defensive errors over this period.



So compared to our peers we’re making far, far fewer defensive mistakes. This too is good.

Goals conceded

It’s always nice to concede fewer goals than your peers, so let’s compare our performance in this regard too.

2014 – conceded 36 goals, 30 inside the area, 6 outside. We conceded the 7th most goals.

2015 – conceded 4, all of them inside the area. We ranked 21st, meaning only 5 teams conceded less than we did.

So conceding the 6th fewest goals in 2015 is a very good start indeed.

Passing and possession

Let’s look at our use of the ball in terms of pass length, ball possession and passing accuracy.

2014 – 50% possession, 78% accuracy, 21 metre average length

2015 – 48% possession, 67% accuracy, 22 metre average length

While the stats look like we’re performing worse, I do think they are perhaps skewed by the “crab football” matches. Dave Hockaday and Darko Milanic both seemed to favour ineffective sideways football, meaning we made a lot of successful passes and presumably had more of the ball, but couldn’t score in a month of Sundays.

So while we’re seeing less of the ball and evidently making fewer successful passes, the results show that we’re doing better as a result.

Data, sometimes contextualising it matters a lot.

Goals scored

And finally, it’s hard to win matches if you’re not scoring, so let’s compare our scoring ability to our peers over those two defined periods.

2014 – ranked 18th for goals scored

2015 – ranked 11th for goals scored

So proportionally we’re scoring more goals than we were. That’s a positive.

So in summary we’re creating more chances, making fewer defensive mistakes, conceding less, scoring more – all with worse pass completion and possession stats. Granted, the sample set of data is only 6 matches for 2015 versus many more for 2014, but it’s useful to start trending the data all the same.

So statistically, 4-2-3-1 is working. We’re doing better and climbing the table. That tingling sensation is optimism. It’s strange.