Q&A #1: Ayling, Victor Orta and 20-Goal Strikers
As well as writing the usual articles when time allows, I’ll also try to open up to some questions from readers every few weeks. This should afford the chance to cover more topics in a shorter time, as well as some of the ideas/fan theories that haven’t been looked at on the blog previously.
Thanks again to those who left their questions on Twitter. This will be the first go at it, so will last as long as reader interest dictates…
Q from @FocusOnLeeds: Kind of involves Leeds but be interested in a similar article what you recently did but about whether or not you really need a 20 plus goal scorer to get promoted.
A: The ‘20-goal striker’ term is strangely well-embedded in football to say there’s little evidence that owning one will make you a great team. Of course, owning a striker capable of scoring 20+ is a good thing to have, but finding one while having the rest of your squad in order is a different thing.
In the 2017–18 season, the three promoted teams — Wolves, Cardiff and Fulham — scored a combined 239 goals between them, despite none of them owning a player who netted 20 during the campaign. In 2013–14, Ross McCormack scored 28 goals in a Leeds team that lost 21 games and finished 15 points outside of the play-offs.
The term seems to come from the same line of thinking that when a team sells their star striker, they’ve now lost 20–30 goals that need to be replaced — when instead their replacement could score 10 goals and yet they become a better team after making defensive additions with the transfer money.
As of the Championship’s restart, Leeds are on track to be one of the best performers in the league’s recent history. And though there’s little doubting a few more goals from Patrick Bamford would have made for a smoother road, it wouldn’t have meant Leeds are infinitely better than they were all along.
Q from @Jon_Mackenzie: I’d be pretty interested on something on Luke Ayling. His role has changed under Bielsa. How do the underlying numbers show that change?
A: It’s clear to see why Bielsa is a big fan of Ayling. In his master plan where versatility earns you a lot of credit, the fact that Ayling can move naturally between playing as a third centre back and a creative full back (depending on the game situation) makes him so valuable to the current side. This has seen his role expanded from that of an orthodox full back in a 4–2–3–1 under previous managers.
Bielsa’s tendency to use midfielders in defence for their ability in possession is well-known. Although Ayling isn’t a midfielder, his combination of reliability in playing out from the back, as well as his positive play once Leeds have moved upfield, is of similar value to playing a midfielder in a defensive position. Among full-backs to have played 900 minutes in the Championship this season, Ayling ranks first in terms of progressive carries per 90.
Through the combination of merging centre back duties with those of an advanced full-back, this makes him relevant to Leeds’ play in almost every aspect — whether it be building from the goalkeeper, circulating the ball in deep areas, controlling possession around midfield or aiding attacks in the final third.
Despite playing in a much more aggressive attacking team under Bielsa, the percentage of Ayling’s passes in the opposition half has actually decreased when compared to previous managers. This isn’t a slight on his attacking involvement, however. It merely shows that Ayling has been more involved in the build-up play under Bielsa, as part of the temporary centre back positions he regularly takes up. The key point is that Ayling’s attacking contributions — once he is released from the build-up phase — have simultaneously seen a notable increase.
He makes more touches in the opposition box and also provides more links to the penalty area through passes and chances created. This has resulted in the defender recording seven direct goal involvements in the Championship this season (three goals and four assists); the same number as Nottingham Forest’s Matty Cash, who is arguably the most prominent attacking full-back in the league, as well as a recently-reverted winger.
Using Ayling’s goal against Huddersfield as an example, the two combined clips below were separated by roughly 40 seconds. In the first part, we see Ayling in a position to build from the back as part of a temporary three-CB group. In the same spell of possession, Ayling finishes the move from the back post after joining the attack and catching Karlan Grant (#16) — who last saw Ayling on the edge of Leeds’ box — unaware of his presence at the other end.
Q from @gabrieldud: We have this common sense that Leeds does better after a week or two of resting… Not sure if that still applies, but could be an argument to talk about now that we had 3 months without games…
A: For the evidence we have under Bielsa, it’d be fair to say Leeds have performed strongly at the start of their two Championship campaigns — the months in which they have played after the longest periods of competitive downtime. It’s also notable that Leeds have produced two of their sharpest performances under Bielsa in the two season openers they’ve played (3–1 v Stoke in 2018 and Bristol City in 2019).
Despite the degree to which Leeds rely on their intensity and rhythm of play, they’ve had no such problems finding their top gears early on in the process. Whether the pervading factor in this is the team’s freshness, however, we can’t be sure. It’s difficult to imagine Bielsa viewing Leeds’ downtime as an opportunity, even if his players can attack the final nine games with an unexpected lack of fatigue.
As a very general outlook, the table below shows Leeds’ record in their opening nine games of Bielsa’s two league campaigns (I use nine given the remaining outings this season). The Whites have only lost three of the 18 combined games in these periods, while their performances at the start of this season were arguably more complete than the same period in 2018–19.
For reference, Leeds’ three defeats in this run were: 1–2 v Birmingham, 0–1 v Charlton and 0–1 v Swansea. A fine selection of migraine-inducing “how the hell did we lose that?” afternoons.
Of course, the comparison in question should be taken lightly. Predicting anything football-related given the circumstances of the season is pretty much impossible. The only measures we can use with any certainty are the performances of Championship teams before the break. Leeds have been the pick of the bunch so far, but they still have work to do.
Q from @cyclingjonny: The hits/misses of Victor Orta would be interesting. Yes he got Bielsa and Ben White, but I don’t think he’s got a striker right yet. And he bought vast amounts of useless to the club in his first year which cost the club a fortune in wages.
A: I’m hoping to find some time in the future to do a more in-depth article on Victor Orta, as it’s obviously a very polarising topic among Leeds fans. In terms of trying to state the case that he’s either a good or bad Sporting Director, it’d take a lot more than a handful of paragraphs to attempt that (which is ironic when most of the Orta debate happens on Twitter).
Personally, I don’t think it makes much sense to grade every transfer and then make a conclusion on Orta’s work by the proportion of those that were deemed to be successes or failures. The role of a Sporting Director is to try and optimise the performance of the club as a whole, not just sign players. And the reality is that Leeds are now in a position they aspired to be in when Orta first arrived at the club.
“I’m responsible for coordinating all the human resources of the football side: the head coach, medical department, media department, scouting and even the academy. I need to be involved in every decision related to football.” — Victor Orta, April 2020
While many will put that down to the sole act of convincing Bielsa to join the club, even if that were the case, how much weight do we give to Orta in terms of channelling Leeds’ success? Would a Sporting Director have done more good for his club if the three strikers he signed all had 15+ goal seasons under the management of Aitor Karanka?
Sticking just to signings for the time being, I think we’d be well served to learn from the lesson that Mateusz Klich taught us. It’s a process littered with hazards for those involved, and made even more difficult to view from a fan’s perspective when we don’t know the details of each case.
Klich was a matter of weeks from leaving Leeds in the summer of 2017, and in reality not many would have stopped to care. As far as the average fan was concerned, Klich was a bad signing who clearly had little to offer and Victor Orta had signed ‘another’ dud. Yet the fact is he’s now one of the best midfielders in the Championship and a regular for the Polish national side. The only variable between him being a worthless player and a valuable player was a more conducive environment for him to show it.
While many will point to Bielsa transforming him into that valuable player, Klich was already 28 at the start of Bielsa’s first season — widely considered to be within the prime years for a footballer. Did he really improve his quality to become one of the Championship’s best midfielders within a few weeks of working under Bielsa, or did he just happen into a more favourable period where he could give a more accurate portrayal of his real ability?
A different example would be Barry Douglas. He was unanimously well-received by Leeds fans when he arrived, and ticked just about every box for a potential signing. He had a season’s worth of excellent performances in the Championship, led the league in assists, was still in his prime football years, and clearly showed sufficient quality to function in Bielsa’s possession-based attacking style. In terms of scouting and limiting risk, Douglas was about as sure as you could be when committing to a deal.
If you were to rate Douglas’ career at Leeds in the time since, it would be generous to go above a 6/10. Do we now remember him as a bad signing by Victor Orta, even if we all agreed in the moment it was a great signing?
(As a quick aside, I think this article by Tiago Estêvão is a helpful one in terms of looking at how football transfers can be more fairly assessed — https://medium.com/@TiagoEstv/how-to-judge-a-football-transfer-dfb33faba521)
