Daniel Wales and Lee Sobot discuss where Leeds were at this stage last season and how it compares to where they are now.
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00:00I think we're going to start this week by looking at sort of where Leeds were this time
00:07last year, and we will go on to look at sort of where they are right now and a bit of a
00:12quarter-season review, but if we look at where they were last year, because of course we
00:17all know what happened at the end of last season, playoffs, Wembley, we don't really
00:21need to be reminded of that, but where were they at this point last season, and how does
00:25that bode looking ahead to this season?
00:28Well, there's two things with this. Number one, they're actually one point better off
00:31now than they were last season, and the second thing is that the two teams at the top of
00:36the division last season had an awful lot more points than the top two in Sunderland
00:41and Sheffield United did this season. So both of those aspects are positive for Leeds. The
00:47one thing that you would probably say to counteract that is that if that's the case, then why
00:50aren't they in the top two? That's probably the best summary of it, realistically, and
00:55I think a lot of people will feel they probably should be in the top two. I think Daniel Farke
00:59will probably feel that without moaning or complaining too much, because he doesn't really
01:03tend to do that, but he does often obviously say about the stats in the games and stuff
01:06like that, and as we'll talk about, there have been too many games where they've left
01:09with one point or sometimes none when really they should have had three, but that's the
01:13way football is. But the 15th game last season was actually the 1-0 win at Leicester, which
01:17was obviously probably one of the results of the season last season. That left them
01:20on 28 points, so obviously that's one point off the tally where they are now. But it's
01:25staggering when you look at it now, because even that win last season, that still left
01:29them 11 points behind Leicester, which is absolutely a massive gap, really, isn't it?
01:33And it makes you realise how well they did to chase that down. And it still left them
01:37six behind Ipswich, who also had two games in hand. So basically, Ipswich had the chance
01:41at that point to go 12 ahead of them. So compared to where we're at now, obviously with them
01:46both just two points behind both Sunderland and Sheffield United, it's chalk and cheese.
01:51It's dramatically different, obviously, because they are now within one result of leapfrogging
01:56both of those two teams. So that's definitely a positive aspect. What you would say also
02:00is that both those two teams last season, Leicester and Ipswich, at that stage of the
02:06season, everybody thought the question was, can they keep that going? And they most definitely
02:10did. Obviously, Leicester finishing with 97 and Ipswich with 96. Crazy tallies, more than
02:17two points a game average, which obviously meant that 90 for Leeds wasn't enough. And
02:22I think the feeling would probably be that 90 would be enough this season. I mean, even
02:27that's not quite two points a game, is it? It's not far off. But I think if they go with
02:31two points a game or something close to ideally a little bit better, then that probably should
02:35be enough. So, you know, to summarise, they are, well, they are as simple as that. They
02:41are in a better position than they were this stage last season on two fronts. Number one,
02:45because they've got actually more points. And number two, because they're nowhere near
02:49as far away from the automatic promotion places. So it's there in black and white. They are
02:53sort of, if you like, I don't know about ahead of schedule, because the schedule ultimately
02:57didn't end in success last season.