These are exciting times for Leeds United fans, we’re back in the Premier League after a long 16 year wait. We “survived” our first season back with relative ease finishing in 9th position, finishing with many more points than the two other promoted sides Fulham & West Brom, both of whom are going to be seeing out the 21/22 season back in the EFL Championship.
We will go down as one of the best newly promoted sides in Premier League history, doing so in an era when the financial gap between the biggest in the league and the smallest is tremendous
But now is where things have the potential to get tough, many sides who do well in their 1st season face a 2nd season syndrome. Sheffield United are the most recent victims of this, they were promoted in the 18/19 Season finishing 9th in their first season back in 19/20 with 54 points, However they finished the 20/21 season bottom of the league with only 23 points.
Sheffield United struggled so much in their 2nd season due to a number of factors in my view, firstly they did not recruit well. They did spend money, however the players they spent the most of this money on weren’t wise investments, especially the purchase of Rhian Brewster for £23mil from Liverpool was a poor signing, Rhian was not a proven Premier League player, he wasn’t even a proven championship player, this was a lot of money to spend on a player in a position they really needed to invest in, Rhian’s highest appearances in one season amounted to 20 in the previous season for Swansea scoring 10 goals. This was a massive risk and one which didn’t pay off with Rhian not scoring a single goal in 27 Premier League appearances, long term the investment may pay off as he is still young but it didn’t help them survive.
Another reason for Sheffield United struggling was that in their first season they were winning a lot of games by tight margins in 19/20, they only scored 39 goals across the whole season, making up for this by only conceding 39 goals. This meant that it would be very easy for wins to turn to losses or draws to turn to losses and in fact by January they only had 2 points on the board. The Blades struggled to create chances & score goals, only scoring 20 goals all season which is around half the goals they scored in 19/20. Compounded with the signing of a lacklustre striker in Brewster they really had no firepower to win them games.
Now let's examine these points and see if we could suffer similarly. Firstly recruitment, I don’t feel we will suffer with a bad year in the transfer window, so far we have secured a replacement Left back for the departing Gjanni Alioski in Junior Firpo. This should be an upgrade on Gjanni, there is a slight risk given Firpo hasn’t played a lot of games in the last few years but I feel this isn’t a big risk, there was a reason Firpo didn’t play a lot for Barcelona and that reason is Jordi Alba, one of the best fullbacks in modern football. The other signings we have made thus far have been young players to give our U23 team extra options, but one of these who I think has potential to contribute to the first team is Lewis Bate, Lewis seems to be of a very high standard and has many capabilities which Bielsa will love. I would be very surprised if he wasn’t at least seeing the first team bench within the first few months of the season.
The second reason Sheffield Utd struggled was lack of goals, this is something we do not have an issue with, we scored 62 goals last season, only 5 teams scored more goals than we did last season. Is this amount of goals sustainable? Or did we come out well and be favoured by the xG gods? Across the season we accumulated 57.5xG and scored 62 goals, this is an over performance of 4.5 goals. This isn’t a massive overperformance and only equates to an overperformance of 0.12 per game, However we also had an overperformance on xGA(Expected goals against), we allowed 62.9xGA and conceded 54 goals this was an overperformance of nearly 9 goals. These two combined may give us the potential to worry that if we have some variance we may see some games change from wins to draws or losses.
However there are other factors, we had an exorbitant amount of injuries amongst our CBs last season, Robin Koch missed 18 games, Diego Llorente missed 19 games and lastly Liam Cooper missed 8 games. This is unlikely to happen two seasons consecutively, we may see some injuries but with luck a lot less than last season. This will mean we should have a more settled defence and we should concede a lot less goals than the 54 we did last season.
While there is always a possibility for us to have a much worse season I don’t feel it will happen. We have never lost 3 league games in a row under Marcelo Bielsa and this is because Marcelo has such high standards for himself and the team. We have always responded well after a couple of bad games and I don’t think that will change this coming season. We have players across the pitch who act as leaders and set standards for the rest of the squad to follow, in addition we have a group of hungry young players waiting for an opportunity for a spot to open in the first team which also will push the first team players on to try to keep their places.
New Signings
Now we know very well all of the players from last season but what about our new signings? What do you know about them? Are they going to seamlessly blend with our squad and raise our level like Raphinha or are they going to end up like Big JKA?
Junior Firpo
Our first new signing is 24 year old Junior Firpo, who we signed from Barcelona, breathe that in folks we are now signing players from Barcelona, quite a big change from paying £1mil for Luke Murphy from Crewe Alexandra.
Junior arrived in Yorkshire for a fee of £13.5mil, only signing for Barcelona for £18mil in August 2019 from Real Betis. Meaning Barcelona suffered a loss in this transfer, however they do have some sell on clauses so should recoup the rest when/if we sell Junior.
He accrued 62 La Liga appearances with 38 of these appearances being in La Liga, he also made 4 appearances in Europa League at Betis. He played mainly as a left midfielder/Wingback for Betis, as Betis played a system with 3 defenders, meaning he was their sole wide presence.
Junior hasn’t had a great time at Barca, he only played 24 games in total across 2 seasons and of those 24 games he only started 14 matches. Junior was signed to be a backup to Jordi Alba, and as such he has found gametime very hard to come by. Jordi Alba is an elite Left back who even at 32 years old is still putting out numbers amongst the best in the world. It was always going to be a tough task for Junior to get in that spot.
Junior was very highly regarded when he moved from Real Betis to Barca, however he wasn’t quite able to match the very high expectations they had and since he really wasn’t given a fair shot it makes his time at Barca seem quite bad.
However, touching more on his time at Betis we can see a better reflection of what attracted an Elite club like Barca to him. Below is a visual of his final season at Real Betis comparing his stats against other fullbacks in the Top 5 European league’s, by method of his percentile ranking(To explain this, if someone is in the 99th Percentile they are in the top 1%).
As you can see he has many attributes where he exceeds the median ranking for a left back in the top 5 league’s. There are even many where he breaks into the top 10%, Barcelona play with very attacking fullbacks and as such his stats in the final third such as carries into penalty area, penalty area touches and progressive passes received will have shown them he likes to run into the box. Also this season was from when he was only 21 so these are strong stats for his age group.
Now we look at the following season for Barcelona in 19/20, you can see many improvements in his game.
You can see many of his stats have seen improvements since moving to Barcelona, at Betis he was in the top 10% for 6 stats. Whereas with Barcelona he is in the top 10% for 10 different stats. As well as some stats such as Tackles improving from being below average to just above average.
Junior has so much potential yet to unlock and Bielsa will see Firpo as his own project, to recapture this player's potential and turn him into an elite fullback in the Premier League. He should fit into our squad well with his attacking nature and be a real upgrade on Gjanni Alioski despite how much I love Gjanni.
Kristoffer Klaesson
After Firpo we brought in a new goalkeeper to replace the outgoing Kiko Casilla who has left for the season on loan to Elche in Spain, Kiko isn’t expected to return to the club as sees this as a route to a permanent deal in his home country.
We didn’t replace Kiko with another experienced GK as expected and instead brought in a player similar to Illan Meslier in Kristoffer Klaesson. Kristoffer is only 20 years old, so younger even than Meslier who turned 21 last season.
Similar to Meslier he has played a lot of senior football for a young age, playing 57 games for Valerenga’s first team in the Norwegian Eliteserien including 30 appearances for Valerenga’s 2nd team in Norway’s 3rd tier.
Kristoffer has represented Norway at every age range from U21 below making 38 app’s for the Norway youth teams, he is yet to be capped for Norway’s main national side but is expected to do so in the future as his potential is enormous playing so much football at a young age.
Kristoffer has quite a task to try to supplant Illan Meslier as No 1 Goalkeeper for Leeds United, with Meslier having such a stellar season in his first experience of the English top flight breaking multiple records for an U21 goalkeeper including most Premier League clean sheets, Most Premier League starts and youngest Premier League goalkeeper to keep 10 clean sheets at 21 years and 54 days. He kept 11 clean sheets last season which is phenomenal for his age.
However Kristoffer has lots of ability himself as you can see below from his Wyscout data.
Kris was one of the youngest goalkeepers in the Eliteserien, with many stats above the median GK, His shot stopping is amongst the best in the league being close to the 80th percentile. There will be a learning curve for Kris as he will be expected to play like a Bielsa goalkeeper, Bielsa puts a lot of pressure on his GK’s expecting them to prioritise playing out from the back than lumping it forward and we would expect his average pass length to significantly reduce to be in keeping with Illan Meslier.
We’ve picked up Kris for a very low fee of around £1.8mil which is Valerenga’s 6th highest ever transfer fee with the highest being only £2.5mil. This is a good deal for both clubs and should Kristoffer develop he will easily be worth considerably more than this in the future.
U23 Signings
We made many new signings destined for our U23’s squad this season as we have done in the last few seasons. We have a real commitment to developing youth and bringing in talent from other academies when possible.
Amari Miller
We started off with the signing of Amari Miller from Birmingham City for an undisclosed fee in June, Amari is 18 years old and has a total of 5 senior appearances in his career, all coming for Birmingham in the Championship last season playing 187 minutes.
Amari is a winger by trade and played minutes on both Left & Right wing, but most of his appearances did come on the right wing.
We have a description of Amari courtesy of former Leeds United player Lee Bowyer, who is currently Birmingham City manager. “Goals, assists, pace, something that we probably lack a bit is pace. He’s at that age where he is fearless. When he came on against Stoke, he got himself into an area and wasn’t afraid to go at the defender. I think he will be a good player. He just needs to keep working hard. Hopefully, this taste that he’s having will drive him on for next season. Maybe he will play again this season.I like him as a person, his manners and he’s respectful. The senior players love him as well.He’s going to make mistakes, but he keeps going. He’s fitted into the group well.”
There isn’t much footage available of Amari however we have now seen him play twice in pre-season friendlies. Once against Guiseley AFC and another against Fleetwood Town. While he didn’t register a goal or assist in these games in the game against Guiseley he was a handful for Guiseley being fouled twice in the opening 15 minutes as well as getting past his man multiple times, he looks to have good close control, a lot of pace & his movement seems good especially his eye for one two moves.
No doubt there is a lot more to come from this young man and I’m looking forward to his showings in the Premier League 2 Division 1 this coming campaign.
Sean McGurk
Sean arrived in Yorkshire from fellow Yorkshire club Wigan Athletic, following in the footsteps of Joe Gelhardt last season. We had been following McGurk for some time, last season we were rumoured to be interested and this season we signed him for an undisclosed fee but not expected to be a high amount, rumoured less than £1mil.
Sean is a goal scoring right winger who is also capable of playing in attacking midfield, he likes to cut inside and spends a lot of his time attacking the right half space, which will fit in well with our other U23 signings.
As I said previously he is a goalscoring midfielder scoring 15 goals in 25 appearances for Wigan’s U23’s, a strong showing for a winger. As well as this he has claimed 3 goals and 1 assist in 5 FA Youth Cup appearances. He even scored in his recent debut for our U23 side.
Sean is yet to make his senior debut at club level, and we may be waiting some time for this to happen with how much talent we have in our U23’s team. However it isn’t impossible if this young Dynamo impresses Bielsa.
Most of the above information came via a thread on McGurk from @FocusonLeeds on twitter.
Lewis Bate
Our final new arrival at Thorpe Arch is Lewis Bate arriving from Chelsea for a fee of around £1.5mil. Lewis is very highly regarded amongst Chelsea’s fanbase(At least the ones who watch their Youth team) He’s capable of playing as a Defensive Midfield & a Central Midfielder.
We have seen him play most recently in our match against Fleetwood Town, he didn’t start the match but played all of the 2nd half. Unfortunately 15 minutes into his time on the pitch he conceded a penalty which Fleetwood scored. However he grew into the game after this and he impressed me with his range of passing & he was very close to an assist after he delivered a lovely cut back to Max Dean who’s shot was saved very well by ex Leeds GK Alex Cairns.
Lewis could well have the talent to provide a backup option to Kalvin Phillips in the future after he has bedded into the U23 side. He has a very strong range of passing, especially over long distances. His ball carrying is very strong which goes along with him being quite press resistant.
Big things are expected of Bate and I for one am very excited about his potential. I’ll be watching our U23’s eagerly to see how he progresses. As I’m sure Bielsa will too.
Conclusions
There is more time left for us to bring in more signings which I’m sure we will do, as long as we do bring in some more signings then this should be seen as a decent window. While not as big as last season's window it would still patch the holes in the squad which the departures of Gjanni Alioski, Gaetano Berardi, Pablo Hernandez & Kiko Casilla left.
We start the season against our biggest rivals Manchester United, we haven’t had the strongest of outings in pre-season which has led many to be nervous about our chances. However we always have a strong chance when Marcelo Bielsa is our manager.
I feel this season we would do well to finish in a similar or slightly lower position than we did last season which would be fine, we could and should avoid suffering from the much discussed “Second Season Syndrome” and it is equally possible we could out do what we accomplished last season and finish in a Europa League position.
If there is one thing we know about Marcelo Bielsa, he usually does better at the 2nd time of asking due to how rigorously he analyses everything that happens, in his first season in the championship he nearly won us automatic promotion, in his second season he won the league by a big margin. Even Bielsa can learn lessons, lets see what lessons he learned from last season's Premier League.
My prediction for the season? I’m saying 8th, but hoping for better.