Former England international Owen Hargreaves has praised Leeds United for doing something sensible this season, despite their recent Premier League struggles.
Leeds head coach Daniel Farke has watched a positive start to the Premier League slip through his fingers, mainly thanks to his side’s poor away form.
With 16 Leeds players currently on international duty, Farke will not have much chance to work with his first-team following the disheartening 3-1 defeat against Nottingham Forest.
Former Leeds defender Jon Newsome criticised Farke after the Forest defeat, who accused Farke of burying his head in the sand and ignoring the problems with the team’s set-up.
However, despite Leeds’ poor run of recent form, Farke has received praise from Owen Hargreaves, as the German looks for a way to coax an improvement from his side.
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Owen Hargreaves praises Daniel Farke’s Leeds United approach
Speaking on The Breakdown on TNT Sports, Hargreaves gave his verdict on Leeds’ fight for Premier League survival.
Robbie Mustoe recently warned Farke that Leeds are in for a long winter, and programme host Darren Fletcher backed this up, stating: Leeds and Burnley are starting to do this (struggle).”
However, according to Hargreaves, Leeds are giving themselves a fighting chance at survival, having adapted their style to be more direct.
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Owen Hargreaves said: “But at least they’re playing more sensibly, aren’t they? They aren’t trying to out-possession Man City and Liverpool, are they?”
This assessment was backed by Hargreaves’ former England teammate Joe Cole, who added: “They’re giving themselves a chance, aren’t they?”
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Opta stats show Leeds United are underperforming in the Premier League
While Leeds have slipped to four defeats in their last five games, they have been competitive for stretches of all of those games, which suggests that this approach can work in the top flight.
This is demonstrated by the Opta Predicted Points table for the Premier League season so far, which shows that Leeds are underperforming against their expected points tally.
Opta’s calculation gives Leeds an expected points tally of 15.2 from 11 games so far this season, four points more than they have actually accrued. According to the data, Leeds should be sitting in 10th place, four points clear of the bottom three.
However, the reality of Leeds’ recent defeat shows that, although they may be competitive statistically, their style of play is not delivering the results they need. With a difficult run of fixtures coming up, Farke may be forced to change his approach again.