MOT Tactics – Conversion percentage against Leeds
This article is part of a regular series from Leeds Twitter account All Stats Aren’t We – the team also host a brilliant podcast that goes in-depth into the tactics of Marcelo Bielsa and a deeper look at the underlying stats.
As is shown by this spreadsheet above though, in the games where they’ve conceded the highest amount of box shots, against Barnsley and WBA, they’ve actually managed to keep clean sheets. As per the xG, they could have been expected to concede 1 in each of those games.
It’s in the games where Leeds dropped points that this gets particularly interesting. According to xG, only Forest could have been expected to score against Leeds, which they did, through a horrible double chance scramble that made up 2 of their 3 attempts in the box.
Meanwhile; Derby, Charlton and Swansea all posted xG of less than 0.5 facing Leeds. However, they all scored. As above, the total for box shots conceded by Leeds is an impressively low 42 (4.2 per game for those at the back) and the conversion % is *just* above the league average at 11.9.
If Derby, Charlton, Swansea and Forest were one team though, their conversion rate against Leeds would be 33.33, which is frankly ridiculously high, especially considering they only took 12 shots in the box between them.
So, the good news is, Leeds are so good defensively that teams have got to be extremely clinical in order to take points from Leeds. West Brom are clearly the best team Leeds have faced this season and they couldn’t manage it.
Whilst it’s been very frustrating to watch Leeds drop points to Charlton, Derby, Swansea and Forest; in games they totally dominated, the vast majority of the time the opposition will not be so clinical. Of course, we need to defend corners better, but the West Brom game was a start.