MOT View: Leeds duo featuring in TOTM highlights added importance of one area in winning run
Leeds United duo Luke Ayling and Liam Cooper have both been selected in WhoScored’s Championship Team of the Month for February.
The month didn’t start off in the best way possible for the Whites, who actually lost back-to-back games against Wigan and Nottingham Forest.
It finished perfectly though as Marcelo Bielsa’s men backed up an impressive 1-1 draw against Brentford with four wins on the bounce.
More impressively, all four of those wins came with the Whites keeping clean-sheets after a torrid defensive spell over Christmas and New Year which saw them concede 20 goals in 11 games before that run.
Ayling and Cooper were both obviously key to that turn in fortunes, and their inclusion in this Team of the Month proves how important the return to form at the back has been for Leeds.
The clean sheet against Bristol was the first since the beginning of December, and it has obviously given the whole squad a huge boost of confidence moving forward.
Ayling, in particular, has been pivotal to this turn in form and has even got on the scoresheet on a couple of occasions against Bristol and Hull.
Looking at his stats from this month, the right-back actually completed the most accurate passes of any player in the entire division in February with 364 – highlighting his influence in each third of the pitch for the Whites.
The 28-year-old also managed to make 20 tackles according to WhoScored last month, which is actually 17 more than he completed in the previous month – a massive improvement in his determination to win the ball back.
If Leeds can continue with their resilient efforts at the back, they will be hard to stop going forward – something that could be key in the race for promotion to the Premier League.
In other Leeds United news, Bielsa has responded to question on whether or not Casilla has played his final game for the club