Lethargic Leeds need consistency

Just as Leeds United look set to put their foot on the neck of the rest of the Championship and make the top spot their own, their patchy away form ensures they fall to third after the defeat to Blackburn Rovers.

With just three wins in nine away games, Daniel Farke has to find a way to pick up more wins on the road to ensure his side finishes in the automatic promotion places in May.

The key statistics have favoured Leeds for the vast majority of their games this season, but not yesterday.

Blackburn comfortably created more high-quality chances during the game, creating an xg (expected goals) of 2.17 which is the most United have conceded in a league game so far this season.

Despite Leeds controlling the bulk of the possession, they were limited to just one big chance at Ewood Park as Willy Gnonto failed to convert a one-on-one against ‘keeper Aynsley Pears as the Whites created 1.28 xg.

So, what are the reasons for the troubles away from home?

Mentality Issue?

Speaking after the game, Joe Rodon gave a controversial interview that has sparked debate between Leeds United supporters regarding the team's attitude going into these games against teams they are expected to beat.

In his post-match interview, Rodon said:

“You know when you don’t score goals against these teams you know what they’re going to do, that’s what they always do. They change the system, and they park the bus. We know everything about these teams, we come prepared, and we know everyone changes their system against us,” he said.

Perhaps this mentality could explain why Leeds struggle away from home. It seems as if the one style they employ must work or it simply won’t be their day. Almost as if they expect to just easily dominate proceedings before a ball has been kicked.

Especially when the style relies on control and dominance, when Leeds don’t have a stranglehold of the game and the fullbacks get caught high up the pitch, we are left vulnerable, and we saw this in the build-up to the penalty incident yesterday when Junior Firpo was caught out in transition.

Some of the lethargic performances we have seen against the likes of Blackburn, Bristol City, West Brom and Millwall lead you to instinctively look at our bench to freshen things up and that’s where our second problem may lie.

Managerial Stubbornness

It’s well-documented within the fanbase that Farke’s substitutions leave a lot to be desired. Whether that be the timing of them and the inability to make a change before the hour mark seemingly when it is clear things need to change or when the change does happen, the personal he opts to bring on.

In yesterday’s game, we saw this with Farke’s decision to wait until the 69th minute to make changes and when the changes eventually came, the decision to sub off Willy Gnonto instead of Dan James was puzzling.

Also, the decision to send Patrick Bamford on before Mateo Joseph is another head-scratching decision when you consider that Bamford always seems to struggle to make an impact on a game when he comes on as of late and his last goal for the club was back in April.

Key Takeaways

The frustrating nature of this result is amplified by the fact Leeds had come off the back of two fantastic wins for different reasons.

One of their best performances of the season against Luton came just three days earlier and they even managed to find a way to win at the death away against Swansea despite not being at their best.

Before the season you would have anticipated Leeds to be at the top of the league for a lot longer than what they have been so far 18 games into the season and that needs to change.

Leeds’ consistency will be put to the test again next Saturday when they play Derby at Elland Road in what will be the first of another three games in seven days.

They also have a challenging midweek fixture against Middlesbrough before another away test against Preston with anything less than 7 points out of these three fixtures coming as a disappointment.