Phil Hay - Inside Elland Road: Leeds United's 2018 in numbers

All that could go wrong did go wrong in the first six months of 2018 but having limped into the summer with wounds to lick, the club stormed out the other side of it after injecting themselves with Marcelo Bielsa.

Leeds head the Championship and are guaranteed to reach Christmas inside the division’s top two, light years away from the inward collapse which defined last season.

Their owner, Andrea Radrizzani, was warned that appointing Bielsa might be “impossible” but tempting Bielsa over from South America was the turning point in a year which was going nowhere.

The final Inside Elland Road column of 2018 takes a numerical look at the 12 months behind a club who are quietly dreaming of what 2019 might bring:

0 - teams who have taken a punt on either Thomas Christiansen or Paul Heckingbottom since the end of their tenures at Elland Road. Leeds are a huge stage for most managers, offering a high level of exposure, but relatively few leave the club and go on to find another job quickly.

1 - penalties awarded. One penalty awarded to Leeds in the whole of 2018 to date, against Queens Park Rangers a week-and-a-half ago. That ended a wait of more than 5,200 minutes and broke a consecutive run of 58 games without any official aiding United by pointing to the spot. The record will take some beating.

3 - head coaches employed by Leeds this year. Christiansen walked the plank in February, Heckingbottom was gone by the start of June but Bielsa is showing more serious staying power. No manager at Elland Road has ever earned a higher salary than him. Sometimes you get what you pay for.

6 - red cards shown to Leeds players, which on closer inspection reveals a marked improvement this season. Five were incurred in the second half of last term and two by Gaetano Berardi alone.

Luke Ayling’s dismissal for two bookable offences against Brentford in October is the only blemish on Bielsa’s watch.

The club have also trimmed their tally of yellow cards.

7 - millions of pounds spent on Patrick Bamford in July, the biggest fee the club have parted with since they mistakenly drew the conclusion that they could afford Robbie Fowler in 2001.

United, though, are still a long way off breaking the transfer record set by Rio Ferdinand’s £18m acquisition from West Ham in November 2000.

8 - August brought Bielsa the manager-of-the-month award, the first won by a United coach since Simon Grayson in 2010 and only the fourth since the EFL’s divisions were rebranded in 2004. It’s a great example of how much aimless football Leeds have endured in the past eight years.

10 - clean sheets with Bielsa as head coach, in tandem with the best defensive home record in the Championship.

To give that figure some context, in the second half of last season Leeds registered just four clean sheets and only two in 16 games with Heckingbottom in charge.

A sea change, in more ways than one.

14 - goals scored by Kemar Roofe in this calendar year, from just 30 league appearances.

One from every two games, or thereabouts, is a strike rate any forward would settle for and he has been one of Bielsa’s most successful projects: a player who didn’t quite fit finally falling into place.

14 - Leeds’ lowest league position in 2018, a trough reached midway through March.

All hopes of promotion were extinguished by then and it is incredible to realise that at that stage, after 38 games, the club had only five points more than they do now with 24 matches still to play.

17 - Leeds United matches shown live by Sky Sports.

That’s 17 from 43 Championship fixtures in total which, considering that Leeds were playing for nothing at all from the beginning of March onwards, is quite an addiction.

18 - points collected by Leeds from 21 matches between January 1 and the end of last season.

This season they have 45 from 22. That transformation is almost unbelievable.

22 - goals either scored or assisted by Pablo Hernandez in 2018. Ten times he found the net himself and on 12 occasions he laid on a finish for someone else.

A little magician, Adam Forshaw called him. Hernandez is that.

24 - players used by Bielsa in the Championship and had it not been for injuries, that total would be closer to 20 if not below. It is unlikely to climb much higher either.

Fulham went up while using 28 last term and Wolves relied on 31. Sunderland finished bottom, having fielded 37.

There is something to be said for a settled, consistent squad.

41 - Leeds have contested 43 league fixtures in 2018 so far. Gjanni Alioski has played in 41 of them, more than anyone else at Elland Road. Bielsa is not alone in liking him or relying on him.

58 - United’s goals in 2018, with three games left to play before the turn of the year. Again, the comparisons are striking. Twenty-two of those came last season. Thirty-six have come this season. Remarkably, all but seven under Bielsa have arrived from open play. Aston Villa, in contrast, have bagged 15 from set-pieces.

59 - Bielsa’s win percentage after 22 league games, a big enough sample to make the statistic relevant.

Combined with a loss rate of nine per cent, it explains why Leeds are top of the table and, like Nuno at Wolves last season, Bielsa is destroying the myth that to do well in the Championship a manager needs to know the Championship. Cobblers.

59.1 - percentage of possession which Leeds are controlling through Bielsa’s tactics. Only two sides in England’s highest two divisions dominate the ball more than United: Manchester City and Chelsea. Leeds hovered around 50 per cent last term.

63 - Bielsa celebrated his 63rd birthday a month after taking charge of Leeds, making him the oldest coach in the Championship. The irony is that he also feels like one of the freshest.

The Premier League is more awash with veterans: Roy Hodgson and Neil Warnock are in their 70s and both Claudio Ranieri and Manuel Pellegrini have a few years on Bielsa.

The division is clearly ready for him.

88 - the percentage level of shareholding which United chairman Andrea Radrizzani dropped to in May after bringing in investment from the San Francisco 49ers.

The agreement between them appears to the give the 49ers the right to increase their stake marginally if Leeds aren’t promoted in May.

236 - senior appearances Gaetano Berardi wracked up, for three different clubs, before finally scoring the first goal of his career at Newport County in January, the only highlight of a truly miserable FA Cup experience.

Twelve years he waited for that. Former Leeds goalkeeper Paul Robinson only needed five.