Jamie Carragher believes that Sam Allardyce may not think that Leeds United’s supposed strengths are actually working in their favour this season and that a change of approach could be urgently needed to get them out of the relegation zone.
United are the second highest-scoring side in the bottom half of the Premier League with 44 – only Leicester City have more – but that has been more than outweighed by a woeful defensive record as they have shipped a division-high 69 goals.
That has led the former Liverpool and England defender to believe that Leeds’ high-pressing approach under Jesse Marsch and Javi Gracia may have caused more trouble than it is worth.
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Carragher suspects Allardyce might agree after seeing him try a different approach in his first game in charge against Manchester City, feeling the issues they experienced in their 2-1 defeat at the Etihad Stadium were problems of execution rather than theory.
He told Sky Sports: “Sam Allardyce has been brought in obviously to get results, but [also] because he’s a completely contrasting style to what they’ve had before.
“What we’ve felt about Leeds since they’ve come up to the Premier League has been [they are] a team who covered a lot of distance and that was the same this season – you think of Bielsa, and they bring Jesse Marsch in because he’s a similar type of coach in terms of what he looks to do.
“You see what they’re top of: [they’re] aggressive; we see this all the time, tackles and interceptions; and in terms of getting goals and expected goals, they’re halfway up the table. They’ve always been a front-foot team. Sam Allardyce may not look at that and think ‘actually, that is a strength’ – that’s why he’s come in and changed it.
“You look at what we class as weaknesses…so he’s come in and seen: goals conceded, worst in the league; clean sheets, almost the worst in the league; getting counter-attacked a lot because they press so high; the goalkeeper save percentage; and their xG prevented, [almost] the worst in the league.”
Carragher went on to demonstrate how the United defence’s tendency to drop too deep opened up much too big a gap between the lines of defence for the Manchester City goals, with Marc Roca coming in for particular criticism for dragging the side back towards their own byline.
He added that he is unsure whether Allardyce is trying to shift towards a new defensive approach with immediate effect or attempting to implement it incrementally, with fellow pundit Martin O’Neill saying: “He wouldn’t have that much time to work with the players for a start. He will have done a lot of video analysis.
“I’m sure at the start of the season Sam wasn’t thinking about managing Leeds United towards the end of the competition, so from that viewpoint he’s [only] had a few days to work with the side.
“You may well be right, Jamie, they may well have decided to man-mark…that’s very difficult. You’re talking about class players at Manchester City who can [beat] you very easily.”
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