How do you solve the problems at Leeds United?
If you could provide a viable answer to that question then you could earn a lot of money by working in football.
It’s something of a conundrum as to how the Whites manage to dominate possession on a weekly basis, yet they’ve come away with just three points from their last five league games prior to their clash against Brentford.
One Sky Sports pundit believes he has a solution to United’s issues.
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What’s been said then?
Paul Merson was having a look at Leeds’ stats over the last few games, and he stated that Leeds need to take inspiration from one of their Championship rivals.
“It’s happening again, and the worrying thing is no clean sheets, they look a tired team, they have a lot of the ball, and they look good with the ball, but they don’t have the cutting edge, there’s no buzz,” Merson said (Sky Sports’ The Debate 10/2/20 10:34PM)
“They need to look at Fulham, and be more like Fulham in that way where they’re just like bang, bang and they’re in, but then again they rely on Mitrovic a lot.”
Nail on the head
As often is the case, Merson isn’t talking all that much sense here, but he has perfectly contradicted himself within his own point.
Fulham can play in the way they do because they have Aleksandar Mitrovic, but the fact of the matter is that Leeds don’t.
United have a striker in Patrick Bamford who is missing bucketloads of chances and is severely underperforming his xG.
Meanwhile, Mitrovic is the division’s top scorer, and everything he touches turns to gold.
Bamford needs these clear cut chances carving out for him, whereas the Serbian can be relied upon to make the most of any half-chance that comes his way.
Granted, Leeds are struggling to find the net lately, but playing more like Fulham isn’t going to solve that issue.
In other news, Leeds have been missing an under-appreciated aspect of Kalvin Phillips’ game.