By Alex Beard

6th Feb, 2020 | 3:15pm

Sports psychotherapist puts finger on big issue that's plaguing Leeds

Leeds United have been knocking on the door of promotion back to the Premier League for a few years now, but the promised land has remained elusive.

We all remember how they were leading the pack for the majority of last season, only for them to fall away at the end.

That doesn’t mean that that will be the case this campaign, although the gap between them and the automatic promotion chasers has once again narrowed.

One of the big reasons for that has been their inability to take their chances, despite being one of the most creative teams in the Championship.

So do the Yorkshire giants have a psychological block preventing them from converting their numerous goalscoring opportunities?

Gary Bloom, a clinical psychotherapist and Leeds fan who has previously worked with League One side Oxford United, believes that they do.

“There’s a great saying my trainer said to me, that once is an accident, twice is a co-incidence and three times is a message,” he told the Yorkshire Evening Post. “We’ve had 18 games now where the same pattern of football arises.

” If you’re playing 18 games of football and the same thing happens, you have 30-plus chances per game and you are only getting a strike percentage of five per cent, something significant has gone wrong.

“There’s no rhyme nor reason why Leeds can’t take 10 or 15 chances in a game, but there’s an inner belief that’s not going to happen.

“I would be wanting to know why [Patrick] Bamford takes 20 chances to score one or two. Look at how many times he only scores when his team are winning.”

This is interesting stuff from Bloom. He might be right that there is something going on at Elland Road, because we’re seeing the same thing over and over again.

It’s easy to point the finger at Bamford and say that he’s the main issue in the team. And it’s true that he misses plenty of chances, while he has a habit of scoring when his side’s already ahead in games.

But there’s obviously more to it than that. You wonder whether it might be worth the club getting in someone like Bloom just to see if it works. It can’t hurt to try, right?

There are proven goalscorers in this Leeds squad, yet they can’t seem to capitalise on their possession and all the chances they create. It’s frustrating, and it’s become a huge problem in their bid for automatic promotion.

There’s no easy solution, but Bielsa sees his chances of being the man to bring top flight football back to Elland Road dwindling the longer this issue remains unanswered.

In other Leeds United news, Bielsa has provided an update on the fitness of January signing Jean-Kevin Augustin.