Leeds United — Tactical Review 22/23
Salutations, It’s been awhile since I’ve wrote anything, and I figured now would be a good time to do so, I started writing this in the middle of the World Cup and while I have enjoyed the a little break from Leeds. I did feel the need to dig back into the goings on at Elland Road.
We are currently near the end of the mini pre-season prior to the season restarting following a controversial, yet very special World Cup, I’ve enjoyed seeing Leeds back on the pitch even if was only for friendlies.
This season I think most will agree has been frustrating, we’ve had some good moments as well as a lot of bad moments and I think it’s fair to say not all supporters are convinced by Jesse Marsch’s tenure at the club.
Anyone who knows me personally can attest, I have found it difficult to watch at times. While I am not a fan of Jesse Marsch’s tactics, I have been willing to give him time and support because I genuinely like him as a person. He seems like a hard-working and personable manager. However, I do feel that his limitations on the pitch have been exposed this season.
We will greet Christmas sitting 15th in the table, 2 points ahead of the relegation spots with a tough run of games to come. Below is the games we’ve played as well as how the table looks.
Anything can happen at this point, with so few points between us and relegation spots, additionally not many points separate us from the mid table positions, but with games coming against Man City, Newcastle, West Ham & Aston Villa. Things could look bad quite quickly.
Shape & Personnel
Firstly I want to touch briefly on the way we have setup for the majority of the season and which personnel have seen the most minutes.
We have played 14 games so far, and the below lineup is the players who have played the most minutes in each of the most used positions so far.
Recently, we have seen some changes in the lineup due to an injury to Luis Sinisterra. Crysencio Summerville has been getting more playing time, and he has been performing so well that we may see Jack Harrison being used as a substitute for the second part of the season when Sinisterra is fully fit.
This season, we have used the 4–2–3–1 formation in all of our Premier League games so far. At times, Marsch has used other formations, typically when trying to protect a lead, such as the 5–4–1 system we saw against Tottenham Hotspur in the latter part of the game.
In addition there has been something of a shift in our shape in our last run of games, I have noticed us having a different shape in possession to what we have out of possession. It is primarily a change in how our pressing structure operates and our in possession structure isn’t much different.
It hasn’t been used for the duration of games and it hasn’t been for every opponent, I have noticed it more in games against the better sides in the division and think I first noticed it against Arsenal.
In game it looks something like the below, rather than having 4 men in the forward pressing unit, you have 3 with Brenden Aaronson dropping into midfield to form a pretty flat 3 in midfield.
This is an interesting shift and one which I feel gives us more solidity and stability in our press. But we’ll look at that in more detail later. I just wanted to briefly touch on it for now.
Style of Play — Width & Pressing
Most people are familiar with Jesse Marsch’s style of play, but I want to provide a more detailed look. He sets up his teams to play an intense, counter-pressing style, which is modeled on the approach used by the Red Bull football family for their clubs. The primary way this strategy creates goal-scoring opportunities is by winning the ball and quickly attacking central spaces.
This is both from winning the ball in the opposition half, as well as quickly attacking using direct play when we win the ball deep in our own half in transitional attacks.
As you see in the previously shown shape, there isn’t much width used, with even the “Wingers” positioned quite close to the middle of the pitch, seeing them operate more like attacking midfielders than wide forwards.
You see in the below clip, the ball is played from our RB — Luke Ayling, to our RM — Jack Harrison. Note how central Jack is when he receives the ball, he then immediately turns to try to play in Rodrigo.
But one common misconception is that the wide areas aren’t used at all, there is times where we will use wide spaces, but without width on the opposite side of the pitch, we will compress our shape so it could look something like the below image.
Another example but this time in a deeper area is below, note how all 10 outfield players are packed onto one side of the pitch.
Why do we do this you ask? This is so we have players surrounding the area where the ball is so if we lose possession, our players can quickly enact our concerted counter press.
With the aim of creating a goalscoring opportunity as soon as possible after winning possession. This style of counter pressing is known as Gegenpressing, which is a style popularised in the German Bundesliga by managers like Jurgen Klopp & Ralf Rangnick.
Below are a few examples of pressing on display in our match vs Chelsea.
The press which Leeds employ has been the most intense in the league, Opta’s The Analyst says our PPDA(Passes per defensive action) is the lowest in the league with only 9.7 passes allowed before we make a defensive action and this has led to the 3rd highest high turnovers of possession with 132.
One thing to note though is that despite our PPDA being low generating a lot of high turnovers. We don’t convert these high turnovers into a shot very often with only 19 of these high turnovers ending with a shot.
For most of the season this press has involved a 4 man pressing unit in the first instance when the opponent has the ball in their own third. With the midfield 2 joining in when it progresses further up the pitch.
We don’t immediately press when the opposition has the ball with their CB’s but when they start to look to play the ball to their fullbacks and looks something like the below.
When the ball is played out wide the trap is sprung and we will pressure the player who the ball is moving towards as well as pressuring other passing options so you hopefully end up like the below.
What some opponents have been doing to counteract this, is to quickly switch the ball out to the opposite flank and we end up like this.
Which is a less than ideal situation and can quickly be turned into dangerous opportunities for our opposition, I think this is one of the reasons we may have seen a change in our pressing structure.
Not only is there an additional man in midfield, we have also not been enacting it as high against select opposition, turning it into more of an aggressive 4–3–3 midblock like the below.
There is still some space the opposition can exploit with this shape, but the addition of the extra man in midfield means the midfielder on the opposite side can offer support much faster than if he was part of the pressing unit.
Possessional Structure
The in possession structure is quite basic, starting from a goal kick we usually see the ball played out to the defence and passed between the back line, waiting for an opportunity to pass into advanced central areas.
We have seen a lot of low driven passes into central areas, with a focus coming from the RCB & RB area, like the below. Usually these passes aim to bypass the players in Central midfield, with usually one of the attacking midfielders or striker dropping into the space to receive.
If the attempted pass finds it’s mark our attacking players will look to play short quick passes between their fellow attackers to try to quickly get the ball into Zone 14 which is shown in the below image.
So this is why you may often see a lot of our players in and around the area in question, as from this area they will try to play one of their fellow attackers through on goal, take a shot or try to dribble past a defender.
Because the buildup is so focused on the middle of the pitch, it can be easily stifled by opposition teams. Another problem arises when the opposition isn’t looking to possess the ball in their own half, as this nullifies our main method of creating chances: the press.
This makes it difficult for us to create high quality chances and have to rely on long distance shots or set piece situations, one example of this is against Bournemouth.
It may seem odd to use a game which we won 4–3 as an example of struggling to create chances. But there is a lot to breakdown about this game.
Above you can see a chart of the xG in the game in question courtesy of understat.com, As you can see the game starts out with us scoring very early, this was from a Rodrigo penalty being scored.
Then in pretty quick succession Bournemouth hit us twice from counter attacking situations putting them ahead 2–1 and then 3–1 not long after 2nd half commenced.
Then as you can see our xG ticks up very slowly with a lot of small value chances in the 2nd half. The goal making it 3–2 is from a 0.01 xG shot from Sam Greenwood from outside the box, followed by a 0.06 xG header from a corner by Liam Cooper.
Now the game is 3–3 and Bournemouth naturally come out of their shell and try to score a winning goal, which is when we quickly break following a Bournemouth corner with a Summerville goal at 0.63 xG.
When teams don’t give us the options in central attacking areas, we are forced to move the ball to wide areas, often through use of long balls like the below example.
Note in particular how narrow Bournemouth positioned their players with 6 players positioned in the middle of the pitch, in particular their RM & LM being noticeable narrow.
This forced us to use wide areas and made it difficult to create good open play chances. On this day variance was on our side and we scored from 2 low quality chances which opened the game state up, allowing us to win the match. But on another day this game could have ended very differently.
So far in the league we have had 7 games where we have had the dominant share of possession and our record in these games is as follows W1D2L4, conversely in the remaining 7 games our record is W3D1L3. It’s still a relatively small sample size, but this is something we need to keep an eye on as the season progresses.
Transitional Attacks
One thing I want to touch on briefly about Leeds under Marsch is our quick counter attacking. This is something which has been a strength and has led to some good chances & goals.
We have mainly seen these opportunities presented against certain opposition or in certain game states. Firstly against the top sides in the league & secondly when a “lesser” side is either wanting to turn a drawing gamestate into a win late in the game or are losing and committing more men forward.
In the below example in our game against Liverpool a very quick counter attack occurred, there was 12 seconds between Gnonto picking up the ball and Bamford receiving the ball in the box, unfortunately Bamford takes a bad touch and nothing ends up coming from the chance, but Bamford from 18 months ago would bury this chance.
This chance is only possible for us because of the game state against a top Premier League side, Liverpool were chasing the game and committing a lot of men forward, their defensive unit weren’t able to get back with the same pace we used.
Which is a contributing factor to our good record in games against the “Big 6” sides, we have had 4 matches against “Big 6” sides and picked up two wins which is 50% our total wins this season. In contrast, we have only managed to secure 2 wins out of a total of 10 games against “The Other 14” teams.
Top sides tend to dominate possession, which makes our pressing tactics more effective in winning possession high up the pitch or forcing mistakes. They also tend to commit more players forward, which creates more space for us to utilize our strength in attacking at pace.
The problem is, there are a lot less sides in the league who will want to keep hold of the ball against us and will be happy to let us possess the ball, knowing it will limit our chances to set pieces & low xG chances. While at the same time make us commit more men, leaving us open to transitional attacking.
Defensive Concerns
Moving on to the other end of the pitch there are also issues, which I feel are a bigger issue than the previously noted chance creation worries. This relates to a specific issue when defending both in transitional moments and in regular attacks.
As previously mentioned, one of the things we are known for is our counter pressing, which means we generally crowd a lot of players around the ball area. This also causes us to compress our players onto one side of the pitch.
This leads to an issue which has been exploited a lot of times so far this season, since we compress our players so much onto one side of the pitch, this leads a lot of space on the opposite side. Which means opposition can take advantage of this by building up on one side of the pitch and then quickly switching to the opposite side.
It seems to happen most in counter attacks, our players will follow the ball along one of the sides like the below situation, the CM loses the ball when trying to pass into zone 14. The opposition then quickly passes the ball long to one of their wide players who progresses the ball.
This is just one potential situation that we can see, which arises from the narrowness of our defence in deep defensive areas.
In the below example, you see Brighton firstly move the ball to the left flank, but then quick recycle it back to the other side where space has opened up.
Below is a still from the above video, You can see 9 of our players congested into one half of the pitch, leaving one player you can see in space and in addition one you can’t see, off screen.
Then when the ball is played back to the right side afterwards, this is the end result, The Brighton player has moved into a lot of space, which for us isn’t an optimal situation. This ended in a shot on target from a low value shot. But if the player decided to hit a low cross then could have ended in a higher volume chance.
Later in this same match Brighton are able to score a pretty soft goal all things considered, in the below you see a long ball come in. Initially Struijk is pretty well positioned in a wide area but he moves to compress the space even more, which leaves space which Brighton exploit.
This is just one example where this kind of goal has been scored past us, it has happened a lot of times this season where opposition manage to drift a man into this space when we are defending in this compressed way.
In our final game in the mini pre season we’ve played ahead of the season restarting we saw AS Monaco tear us apart by exploiting the space we leave behind on the far flank conceding 3 goals from very similar circumstances where the opponent found a lot of space on the opposite flank.
I think the change to our pressing structure to a 4–3–3 shape is an attempt to find a solution to this problem. However it doesn’t appear to be working and if Jesse Marsch isn’t able to find a solution to this problem he may be in trouble.
I do feel there are some other things Jesse could attempt to try to fix this issue, one idea is to instruct the players to adopt a wider rest defence and inserting one CM into the rest defence, most likely Tyler Adams. This would look like the below and would be a more natural way to retreat into a wider defensive structure.
We would need to ensure 4 players are back at all times, it wouldn’t necessarily need to be the above positions, I just feel those are probably the positions/players best suited in our current squad.
You’ll notice I haven’t touched on any of our new players, I was initially going to do so but it was getting quite a lengthy read so I’ll be putting out another article in the next few weeks on our new signings.
I hope you enjoyed reading this, please let me know your thoughts on what you liked and also what you think I’ve got wrong, I’m still learning with this kind of tactical piece so feedback is much appreciated.
Martin Riley
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