Leeds United hosted Blackburn Rovers at Elland Road just before the international break. Leeds started to see a silver lining in their EFL Championship campaign this season with their win over Queens Park Rangers. They hoped to carry forth the momentum of the previous win in this game against Blackburn. The visitors, however, have been struggling with form and are in the 18th position on the league table.
Leeds managed to see this game home with a comfortable 2-1 win. With their dynamic rotations in attack and resilient defensive work rate, they were able to stick to their playing principles and keep Blackburn at bay for majority of the game. In this tactical analysis we examine how both teams faced each other.
Lineups
Up until the previous fixture against QPR, Marcelo Bielsa’s tactics for Leeds raised questions due to their poor run in front of goal costing them points in the Championship. Patrick Bamford was unable to convert his chances in front of goal pushing Leeds’ fans to appeal for Arsenal loanee, Eddie Nketiah to be started over Bamford. But Nketiah’s injury meant Bamford would start in his traditional number nine spot. As we saw in the QPR game, Tyler Roberts has been the missing piece to the puzzle in Leeds’ attack.
Thus it was Roberts alongside Mateusz Klich who started behind Bamford. Jack Harrison and Hélder Costa lined up on the flanks. Kalvin Phillips operated as the defensive midfield in front of the central defensive duo of Liam Cooper and Ben White. Stuart Dallas occupied left-back in the absence of Ezgjan Alioski. Luke Ayling played as the right back. We saw Leeds play in a 4-1-2-3 against the 4-4-1-1 of Blackburn with plenty of rotations as we will elaborate in this analysis.
