OPINION
It’s one of the oldest adages in football, but goals win games. Cliches tend to be cliches for a reason, and there is absolutely no arguing with the logic behind this one. You can pass a team to death, hammer at the door for 90 minutes, but if you don’t put that little round thing between those two white things, you’re not winning, plain and simple. And it would appear that that would be the issue that has ultimately cost Leeds United a place in the Premier League next season. United looked for so long as if they were going to stroll back into the promised land during their first season under Marcelo Bielsa, but in the latter stages of the campaign, the wheels came off in a big way, and now the club face another year in the second tier. And one stat shows exactly why. As posted by Twitter account LUFCDATA, United created 638 chances in 2018/19, compared to 525 from Norwich City and 450 for Sheffield United. Conversion rates for those two sides were 17.7% and 17.3% respectively. Leeds’ was just 11.4%. The tweet goes onto claim that if United’s rate had been 17.5% somewhere in the middle of the two clubs who went up, they would have hit 112 goals – 39 more than the 73 they actually did. When the inquest on why they didn’t go up begins, that might be a good place to start.
This is Futbol have gathered some of the best tweets below:
Sickening that we lacked the quality needed to get us over the line. The stats don’t lie. Would be interesting to see the difference in chance conversion before and after losing Saiz. Not that I want him back btw
— ???Janey (@Scoutsa) May 19, 2019
https://twitter.com/graham_bloor/status/1130144079763922950?s=20
Stop please, not making missing out, any easier
???
— Dumpfor (@Dumpforsp) May 19, 2019
https://twitter.com/LeedsUnUnited/status/1130122398668337152?s=20
Was our biggest problem mate wasted chances and tbf most come from other players not the strikers. If we can improve that conversion rate we will walk the league next season
— Lee Maspero (@Leemo_LUFC) May 19, 2019
We need strikers
— Wilberforce ???? (@Maxkrank) May 19, 2019
Wow. Hopefully the top brass will have similar stats to this.
— Hesslebine (@hesslebine) May 19, 2019
Story of the season. At least MB can analyse this and rectify the Problem.
— stuart (@StuartWeinstoc1) May 19, 2019