EFL Championship 2019/20: Leeds United vs Blackburn Rovers – tactical analysis

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 18^th 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.

Blackburn’s 4-2-3-1 shaped up more as a 4-4-1-1 playing most of the game in the defensive phase with 33% possession. They played with a back four of Elliott Bennett, Ryan Nyambe, Tosin Adarabioyo and Derrick Williams. Lewis Travis and Lewis Holtby played in central midfield in front of the defence. Adam Armstrong and Stewart Downing operated in the wide areas. Sam Gallagher played as the highest man forward and Bradley Dack played alongside him or behind him.

Blackburn’s strategy against Leeds

Blackburn sat deep in an organised structure with no qualms of yielding the possession statistic to Leeds, but they had a plan. The goal was to force errors from the hosts during the buildup and attack the wide spaces on the counter-attack. There was also a directed strategy to restrict Kalvin Phillips from receiving the ball in the buildup.

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