Leeds United summer transfer striker search informed by unseen consideration and relegation story
The last few Premier League tables offer little in the way of encouragement for a newly promoted team like Leeds United but they do tell stories worth listening to.
Last season's table, with its three new boys all finishing in the relegation zone, told a tale of a widening gulf between the Championship and the Premier League. It was a sequel, really, because the 2023/24 table started the ball rolling on the 'straight back down you go' narrative.
The 2024/25 Premier League table also told a story about the importance of goals. Ipswich Town were the top scorers of the bottom three with 36. Tottenham Hotspur in 17th scored 64. The teams in the bottom half who escaped the drop scored an average of 50 times in their 38 games.
Looking back at recent top flight tables you will learn that it's possible to score as many as 50 goals and still go down. Luton Town and Leicester City both did it. Leeds nearly did in the season that saw them returned to the Championship, hitting 48.
People often talk about the importance of a 'proven Premier League striker' or at the very least a goalscorer in your squad capable of hitting double figures from wherever he operates in your front line. But you can have a double-figure goalscorer and still go down. Ipswich had the excellent Liam Delap last season, with his dozen goals. Luton had two of them in the 2023/24 season, with Elijah Adebayo and Carlton Morris. In the 2022/23 campaign Leeds and Leicester had Rodrigo and Harvey Barnes with their respective 13-goal hauls. Both men tasted relegation and promptly left their clubs for pastures new. A centre forward with genuine top flight finishing ability is no safety net.
You can actually score as few as 31 and still stay up - see Wolves in 2022/23 - but the 30 mark has come to be regarded as the absolute bare minimum if you want to survive and if the quality differential is indeed getting bigger between the top flight and the second tier then newly promoted teams will at least need to match current, established outfits in front of goal.
To that end Leeds are expected to try and bring in a striker this summer and a number 10. But creating chances and finishing them off will be only half the battle for any new attackers joining the options already at Daniel Farke's disposal because an even bigger issue for newly promoted teams last season was what happened when they did not have the ball. None of the teams who survived the drop conceded more than 70 goals. All three of the relegated sides shipped more than 80. Their 2023/24 predecessors conceded an average of 89, while only West Ham, who finished ninth, gave up more than 70.
The last two seasons have shown an alarming upward trend when it comes to the goals conceded by the relegated sides but looking further back and generally speaking if you concede 70 or more then you're likely to find yourself involved in the trouble.
Myriad factors go into any relegation with recruitment and managerial appointments often taking a large slice of the blame. Even spending £100m does not guarantee Premier League status - last season's bottom three splashed decent wedges of cash and still found the standard impossible to reach. But at least two of the sides coming back down into the Championship spectacularly failed to lay a glove on opponents when they did not have the ball.
One of the underlying numbers that a standard Premier League table does not show is the PPDA metric. It stands for passes allowed per defensive action in the opposition half and what it measures is the intensity of a team's press. To work out Leeds United's PPDA, for example, you would take all the opposition passes that start in the opposite 60 per cent of the pitch and divide them by the sum of Leeds' defensive actions - fouls, interceptions, successful defensive duels, sliding tackles. Or more simply put, how many passes a team get away with outside of Leeds' defensive third before Farke's men intervene.
Last season Leicester City and Ipswich were in the bottom four when it came to PPDA, allowing an average of 13.25 and 14.2 passes respectively before a defensive action. Now there are of course teams for whom an intense high press is not the plan - Forest finished seventh in the actual table and second bottom for PPDA - but if you are not going to score many goals and your defence is not going to be as organised and mean as Forest's was then making life harder for the opposition higher up the pitch might be a good idea.
And it can start from the front. It certainly did for Marcelo Bielsa's Leeds, who set an absurdly low PPDA of 7.17 when they blitzed the Premier League to finish ninth as a newly promoted side. More often than not it started with Patrick Bamford, who proved adept at picking his angles and timing his runs to put defenders and goalkeepers under pressure.
In the past week a striker at the very top of the game has been held up as a Ballon d’Or worthy candidate simply for how he has pressed defences all season. Speaking after masterminding a 5-0 Champions League final beating of Inter Milan, PSG boss Luis Enrique heaped praise on Ousmane Dembélé's role.
“I think the team was exceptional, to have pressed a team as good as Inter with a very high intensity… Ousmane Dembélé pressed Sommer, Acerbi, and the other central defenders with great intensity, which meant that they didn’t have time to think and it cut the team off," said Enrique.
"I would give Mr. Ousmane Dembélé the Ballon d’Or, if only for how he defended. That’s what you call leading a team. I honestly believe that he deserves the Ballon d’Or, not just because of the titles he has won or the goals he scored, but because of the way he has pressed all season.”
It’s a statistic and a consideration that could and probably should inform Leeds United’s summer transfer window search for a striker.
Defending from the front is not all about defending, though. It's about catching teams out and turning defence into attack in advantageous areas. Just as they did under Bielsa, Leeds in the Championship under Farke did employ an intense press. They were second only to Swansea City when it came to PPDA. No one in the division turned the ball over higher up the pitch than Farke's men, no one created more shots from dispossessing teams in such areas and no one scored as many goals as Leeds plundered from these scenarios. The Whites scored a dozen goals from high turnovers. Sheffield United were second with eight.
Farke's current striker options all have their own strengths and weaknesses. Bamford, as mentioned, developed a taste for pressing and is adept at hold-up play. He hasn't shown the level of goalscoring and finishing acumen that lit up the Covid-era Premier League since then and gametime has been a factor, largely due to injuries. Mateo Joseph presses with intensity too and has the mobility to get around the pitch bothering defenders but finishing was an issue last season. Joel Piroe is a master craftsman when presented with a chance in and around the box but has never looked the most comfortable when it comes to chasing down defenders without the ball. If a number 9 is to lead the line and the press for Farke in the top flight then he will need to be an all-rounder - physically capable of handling the game's biggest, strongest defenders, mobile enough to close them down, technical enough to keep the ball if he wins it and proficient enough in front of goal to finish chances that will come at a premium because Leeds will simply not enjoy the same possession they did in the Championship.
To disrupt what has become a depressingly natural order in the top flight, Leeds will need to disrupt opposition possession as hungrily as they did in the second tier but with even greater efficiency. So when they set out into the summer transfer market to bring Farke new attackers, they'd better be good defenders or the table might tell an all-too familiar story this time next year.