Pub breath

I try not to be too biased or partisan about my team tbh but even objectively, I'm inclined to agree. Think the GD points to us being better overall and we've had a tougher set of fixtures so far. But, don't forget....it's Leeds

Hope so. Always felt we'd reel Ipswich in....just didn't expect Southampton to end up the bigger concern!!

Not really true at all for Leeds. We lost Bamford in the warm up yesterday, in came Piroe and scored. We lost Struijk a few weeks ago, Ampadu slotted in at CB, Gruev came into midfield and we got stronger not weaker. Dan James got injured and Gnonto got his chance and has been on fire. We singed Connor Roberts in jan but he's being kept out by a truly unreal 17 year old. We've got absolutely no concerns about strength in depth.

You're right, you can't rule them out because of where they are. However, I always felt they would drop away and they are doing so at the exact point I expected. I'd put a decent wedge on them ending in the playoff places.

Pressure is on now. They still have to go to Elland Road last game of the season so anything less than the maximum in those 2 games in hand and it's in Leeds' hands to finish above them. Still remain convinced it's between them two for Second. Ipswich are fading and will surely eventually fade out of the picture altogether.

You've got nowt to worry about. No team is catching Leicester.

Yeah, wasn't saying it was completely unique to us. It was absolute carnage though and probably more unsettled than it was for you and Saints. It definitely did bugger up the start but nothing can be done about it now. Still plenty of games to reel those two in but you need to do your job tomorrow

Bugger me Sincerely, it's the only away fan forum I post on and it's only really because you've always been perfectly reasonable towards me. A bit of stick here and there but never abuse. You take a bit back without getting uppity too. I wouldn't bother otherwise.

It's been Christmas mate and we've won 4 straight games since!

Mixed. Most behind him but I personally don't rate him tactically. I think he's a motivator and sets a team up pretty well but when it comes to changing a game as it develops, lacking. The point about GD is that it points to how much teams are destroying their opponents. If Leeds GD is wider than all bar yours, surely we are handing out more big beatings than anyone other than you? In reality, our start is still the difference. Had we been settled at the start and picking up points at the rate we have since September started, we'd be comfortably second and not even having this chat.

I'm not really sure what you mean? What other team apart from Leicester, have blitzed more teams? You know, given that we have the second best gd and all that?

That theory doesn't make a lot of sense. Second best defence in the league and one of the best 3 or 4 teams. There are nearly 20 other teams they'd be better off using all that energy against, surely? A lot of teams are a lot more "fragile" than we are. Teams have "stepped it up" against us in the lower leagues for as long as we've been in them. We might be a pale shadow of the great teams from the 60s and 70s or even the very good teams of the 90s and early noughties. But we are still a name and a team players want to say they've slain.

You thoughts I'd said we'd catch you, didn't you. Be honest mate

Been in Lanzarote mate. Really sorry about not spending my holiday on Foxes Talk!!! Where was this post where I said Leeds would catch Leicester? I said literally rhe opposite, several times.

Yeah, specifically a group of players who cared far more about their careers than the future of their club. Gotta love footballers

20 games is the season so can't really define form. Form is a descriptive for recent results. Both of the two groups of game numbers that are the most recent in your examples, Leeds are superior. I'd say that does a decent job of highlighting that our form is better tbf. As was discussed earlier, extrapolations of either of those over the rest of the season sees us reel you in. I'm just not sure it's likely in reality.

I wasn't arguing for Leeds finishing above Leicester. It was just a comment on the maths of it. Another example of how easily things can change is that you have to come to ER. We win that and it's just a 2 game swing. The gap is significant but it isn't decisive at this point. Our form is better than yours. I still think Leicester will win the league but reckon the gap will be smaller than it is now, by May.

Well it's actually 5 points as things stand. Besides that, that rate is actually about bang on what would be required over the remaining games to make up an 8 point gap.

Well the point of XG is exactly that. If you had 10 low quality shots, then the data used tells them that they have a 1/10 probability of going in. So if you were able to carve out 10 shooting chances in a game, you would actually expect 1 to go in, based on the known data. In that scenario, the team did indeed deserve a goal, for creating 10 low quality shooting opportunities. XG or expected points etc are obviously not perfect but they do often provide useful pointers to teams having an unlucky/lucky run. I've seen many occasions when teams have been over perfoming vs XG/XP and then eventually hit the buffers. This data isn't suggesting Leicester don't deserve their points total but more that Leeds deserved more. That's part of football, unless you are suggesting that Leicester have never had a run of results where they felt unlucky not to pick more points up?

You just kind of reiterated a load of points i'd already made and said "I can’t seem any metric you can use to say it will be close come what May", despite me already agreeing that Leicester will finish well ahead of Leeds. However, if you want one metric which also suggests the teams are far closer than the table suggests, here's one: https://footballxg.com/xg-league-tables/ Just 3 points in it there. That certainly fits with my belief that the teams are very closely matched, now things have got going. They certainly looked that way last Friday. That was my only point. I don't think Leicester are an 11 point better team than Leeds or some 30+ points better if extrapolated over a season. I doubt the gap will be any or much wider come May, which will prove that from September, the teams will have been well matched. But, of course, we'll see.

Who are you arguing with?

The difference being that you had half as many outgoings as Leeds and most of yours were done before we even had a manager in place. We had 7 players who were either first team fixtures or regular players for the first 11, leave in August alone. The shambles you had didn't seem to affect your start. Quite evidently, it did for us. The results in August during the upheaval, were poor. The results since, consistent and good. That's quite obviously a result of getting the players in and the manager having time to work with them. I think you're at risk of being a tad disingenuous if you can't recognise that and the different positions the two managers were in at the start of the season.

I expect you're right. Incredible start Maresca has had to his managerial career. Groundbreaking, probably.

It wasn't arbitrary. Our August was a complete mess and comparing the team we had at the start of the season with the one we have now, makes no sense as it's a different and finally settled team now (another factor being that Maresca had a whole month longer with you than Farke has with us). Comparing from September makes for a reasonable comparison between the two teams. Then factor in match difficulty and number of home vs away matches and it paints a different picture than Leicester being an 11 point better team than Leeds. That stat not lying was what I was contesting, not that Leeds are demonstrably better then Leicester. I was just showing how the table can mislead.

At the end of the season it doesn't. At this stage, the table really can lie and has lied many times before. How many times have you seen a team have a flying start and then eventually reach their true level and finish in the playoffs or worse? It seems to happen most seasons. Of course, that's not the case with Leicester, you'll win the league comfortably. It still doesn't mean that the table cannot be somewhat misleading at the 15 game point. Leeds had a well publicised mess to sort out. It took us time to get the manager and then more time to sort out all the want away players. This team, as it is now, wasn't in place until September. Since then, Leicester have taken just 4 more points than Leeds. There is more. We have also played our 3 most difficult fixtures already - the other present top 4 away. I think you have only played 1 of them. You've also played 1 more home game and 1 fewer away games to us. How the fixtures fall can and will have a big impact over a relatively small pool of games at this stage. So the table can certainly deceive. I don't know if Leicester will prove to be a better team than Leeds by the end of May, from the Sept-May period. My gut tells me that it'll probably be very close, maybe a couple of points between the teams. That'll still be enough to ensure you're comfortably up and winning the league, IMO.