The first two games of Jesse Marsch's tenure as Leeds United manager featured contrasting performances, as the Whites looked much improved against Leicester City, despite falling to a 1-0 loss, before delivering a poor performance in their 3-0 home defeat to Aston Villa on Thursday night.
However, there was one common trait in the two performances: Leeds struggled to defend in wide areas.
Marsch's chosen formation since taking the reins has been the classic Red Bull 4-2-2-2. This formation focuses on narrowness, getting attacking players close together for quick combinations on the edge of their opponent's box and maintaining a compact shape so that they can immediately press the ball carrier together if they lose possession.
The weakness in this shape is that it leaves the full-backs exposed and against Leicester this was borne out by Harvey Barnes being the main attacking threat for the Foxes and eventually proving to be the match winner. Meanwhile, Aston Villa's fullbacks were able to roam forwards untracked and Stuart Dallas and Junior Firpo were unable to cope with their runs. As such, the first two goals came through heavy involvement from both Lucas Digne and Matt Cash, with Cash assisting the first and scoring the second, whilst it was Digne's run behind Dallas which began the move for the opener.
With Sunday's match against Norwich City now taking on enormous importance as the Whites are running out of time to go on the kind of run of form required to pick up the points to guide themselves to safety, they will need to come up with an answer to this issue.
In recent weeks, Norwich's left winger Milot Rashica has looked like their most potent attacking threat. The summer signing from Werder Bremen has had an inconsistent season since arriving in the Premier League but he was one of those players who were negatively affect by Daniel Farke's choice to switch formation to a 3-5-2. Now that Dean Smith has returned him to his preferred position, he has shown more of the kind of form expected from him. He scored the goal that brought the Canaries back into contention before they lost to Liverpool and was unlucky to have a goal chalked off by VAR against Chelsea on Thursday night.
At his best, the Kosovan is a dynamic dribbler and a shooting threat from range. Many would prefer to keep him out wide where he can't come inside to shoot, but in Leeds' case, they may be better served by attempting to shepherd him inside. Their numerical strength is there and they will be more able to win the ball back centrally, or at least have enough blockers to stop any shots, with two midfielders in front of the back four.
With Firpo picking up a knee injury against Villa which will likely end his season, Dallas will move to left back, meaning Luke Ayling will likely return to right back and be tasked with keeping Rashica quiet. If he can do that, Leeds will cut off one of the primary ways of feeding Norwich's goal threat in Teemu Pukki, as Rashica has been the main provider of crosses into the box for the Finnish striker.
Leeds will hope that they can find their feet in attack again against Norwich, with the Canaries the second worst team in the league from a defensive standpoint. If they can fix their weakness in wide areas and shut down Rashica, they can focus on scoring the goals they need to rebuild their confidence after such a punishing run of defeats.
