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This dashboard (Link) is based in March Biesa's first two seasons in charge as Leeds United head coach. As mentioned, the study will use data sources from FBref, transfer market and Whoscored's player ratings. Whilst scrolling through the dashboard, you might want to look out for click icons.
Going through the first graphic, the narrative is quite familiar in itself - that championship clubs in England suffer from a hectic match schedule during the Christmas period. For Leeds United it happens to be to be between the months of January and February. Team performance was consistently affected during the month of January and February across both seasons. Analysing at least nine or more matches played Legion leads managed to win only 50% of the points, losing at least four games in both seasons during the same period.
In terms of game management in 2018, Marcelo Bielsa's youthful squad crumbled under pressure. In comparison to 2019 season where Leeds united accumulated12 points from last four games, Leeds managed only 2 points in their last four games in 2018 that eventually led them to lose their automatic promotion hopes to the premier league.
This study analysed like-to-like squad replacements or comparison of players with similar amount of game time. In the study, all the players played at least 100 minutes of game time.
The squad replacement in 2019 contributed as effectively as the recruits in the previous season. It portrays the balance of Marcelo Bielsa's squad, where the overall ratings improved by point 7% across the two seasons, ensuring a positive impact on performance. Going over the highs in terms of individual performance. Jack Harrison, Illan Meslier and Stuart Dallas were the most improved players in the squad improving their own contribution ratings by at least 5%. Another notable Loanee signing Helder Costa also outperformed his predecessor by 3%, having similar games played. Moving to the season's lows, squad replacements- namely forward Eddie Nketiah on loan from Arsenal had relatively low impact than his predecessor Keemar Roofe in 2018. This could be due to the former player having more minutes under his belt than Eddie NKetiah.
Ben White made a considerable shift but but fell short of his predecessor upon Pontus Janssen's performance by 2%. It was also noted that Barry Douglas's contribution ratings dropped by 4% with relatively fewer games played in 2019. This could be due to him recovering from a collateral ligament knee injury that he sustained in the latter half of 2018/19 season.
Considering the highs and lows, players who performed above-average in comparison to the rest of the squad such as Patrick Bamford, Kalvin Phillips, Mateusz Klich , midfield Maestro Pablo Hernandez, Luke Ayling and Ben white were amongst the peak performers.
Leeds performed better against teams ranking 16 to 20 in the 2019 season as compared to 2018 where they performed better against teams in the top half of the table.
But how is this useful?
Combining the points gained and lost against teams in both seasons, Leeds managed 10 extra points by overcoming teams in in the bottom half of the table, which reflected in the total points tally across the two seasons when they finished with 93 points in 2019, as compared to 83 in 2018.
So against whom did them improve the most ?
Delving into the points loss rate against teams ranked between16 -20, it was noted that Leeds lost 50% more points in 2018. Leeds lost only 7 out of the total 30 points in 2019 in comparison to 2018 were they lost 15 points. The key difference was winning nine more points (3 wins) using the 3-3-3-1 system in 2019 that was popularly used by Bielsa during his Marseille days. This system wasn't used in 2018 as he preferred to stick to the traditional 4-1-4-1 system, which didn't provide them as much success against similar ranked teams.
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