EFL Championship 2019/20: Leeds United vs Bristol City – tactical analysis

Leeds United returned to Elland Road and welcomed Bristol City as their opponents. Marcelo Bielsa’s team had given away their top position of the table and dropped to the second. They finally obtained the second home league win in the new calendar year, a boost for the direct promotion to the Premier League.

Lee Johnson’s Bristol enjoyed a strong run in the EFL Championship recently, they had five wins in the last six. However, their performance in this match was below par, they were no way near to Leeds.

In this tactical analysis, we will show you how Leeds beat Bristol. It is an analysis that focuses on tactics.

Lineups

Bielsa played the exact same team despite obtained a point at Griffin Park, playing in a 4-1-4-1 formation. Liam Cooper and Ben White formed the centre of the defence, they had Kalvin Phillips in front of them. Despite not scoring recently, Patrick Bamford still played as the only striker of Leeds’ side on the pitch.

Johnson’s team played in a 4-4-2 formation, they made a few changes compared to the last game. For the defence, Nathan Baker partnered with Ashley Williams instead of Leicester City loanee Filip Benković; Tomas Kalas played as a right-back, starting ahead of Jack Hunt. At the midfield, Korey Smith missed the game, Han-Noah Massengo started the game; the two strikers were Nahki Wells and Andreas Weimann, Famara Diédhiou was left on the bench.

The build-up

Leeds played in their own style, using their build-up to create attacks and access the final third. Given the previous matches exposed the flaws of their build-ups, Bielsa amended his tactics to play out from the back a bit. Since he possessed a clever sole pivot, Phillips, his team had the flexibility to change the details of the attack.

The biggest element: linkage between the centre-backs (Cooper & White) and the sole pivot (Phillips) remained unchanged. These three players created a three v two numerical advantage against the front two of Bristol, as reflected through their passing triangle in the below image.