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Three things we learned from Leeds in win v Bristol City

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Leeds got their campaign off to a fast start against Bristol City at Ashton Gate on Sunday, scoring three goals, picking up three points and going straight to the top of the table. 

The only black mark was the goal they conceded in the 79th minute, with Marcelo Bielsa’s men switching off to allow Andi Weimann to ghost into the box and fire a shot low past Kiko Casilla.

The game threw up plenty of talking points – here are the three things we learned about Leeds from their 3-1 win.

1: Play-off misery behind them
No one knew how Leeds would react after missing out on automatic promotion and losing the play-off semi-final to Derby last season. The answer? Almost perfectly. They won their first game of last season 3-1, at home to Stoke, and the same scoreline away from home at Bristol City is even more impressive. Bielsa will have been very happy with what he saw on Sunday afternoon.

2: Goals galore
Leeds dominated the game up until the last 10 minutes and the stats read like a game from the previous season. Bielsa’s men enjoyed 60% possession and had 18 shots to Bristol City’s 13. Of these, four were on target, eight off-target and six were blocked [SofaScore]. What will please Bielsa is the number of goals scored. Leeds struggled to convert last season but had three big chances yesterday and only missed one of them. They were devastating on the counter-attack and were never under any pressure until Bristol City mounted a late rally. The ‘attack momentum’ graph from SofaScore below shows this perfectly (the away side is at the bottom).

3: Impressive debut from White
All eyes were on Ben White on Sunday after the on-loan centre-back stepped in for the departed Pontus Jansson. The 21-year-old had a brilliant debut for Leeds – comfortable on the ball and in control throughout. You can see why Bielsa wanted him. At Ashton Gate he had 76 touches, made 56 passes with 85% accuracy, played six long passes with 55% accuracy and made one successful dribble [SofaScore]. He’ll have sterner tests in the Championship but, for now, it’s a case of Pontus who?

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