Leeds United have been praised for being one of the Premier League's most tactically innovative teams in the division this season. The influence of Marcelo Bielsa has been felt throughout the league as now ten games into the campaign, over half of Leeds' top flight foes have faced their first Bielsa test.
The team are now on an unbeaten streak of two games, and face three more winnable fixtures in the coming weeks, against Chelsea, West Ham United and Newcastle United. In their past two outings against Arsenal and Everton, Leeds have allowed no goals, in stark comparison to the eight shipped in the two prior against Leicester City and Crystal Palace.
Despite this noticeable change at the back, it is in attack where Leeds have been perfecting a Marcelo Bielsa tactic.
In truth, it has been an area of Leeds' game which helped them score on multiple occasions in the Championship, but over the past three weeks, it has been used to good effect in the Premier League for the first time.
The tactic in question is Leeds' ability to overload the right flank, creating a numerical advantage over their opponents, or occupying five or six opposition men at a time.
From there, Leeds often need just one pass to render those five opponents out of the game. It happened against Everton for Raphinha's match-winning strike, and it also happened in remarkably similar fashion against Arsenal when Stuart Dallas' effort was saved brilliantly by Bernd Leno.
In a slight variation of the move, Patrick Bamford found the net against Crystal Palace, as a lofted ball to Mateusz Klich operating in an area usually unfamiliar to the Pole, cut out multiple Palace defenders.
The example against Crystal Palace shows a very congested right-hand side of the pitch, which is bypassed by one ball over the top by Luke Ayling.
In doing so, he renders five Palace players ineffectual for the next passage of play as Leeds are in possession behind enemy lines.
The onrushing Patrick Bamford latched onto Klich's knockdown in this instance and took his goal very well, beating Vicente Guaita confidently.
Against Arsenal, the flooding of the right flank is less pronounced, but there is still Mateusz Klich's presence out wide as well as Raphinha and Luke Ayling, thus creating space for Stuart Dallas in the middle.
Raphinha's pass through bodies eliminates a number of Arsenal players from the game as they are forced to shuffle across and try to close down Dallas on the edge of the area where he has space to run into, similar to Bamford's Palace goal.
The Northern Irishman was able to get his shot off from a position not dissimilar from where Raphinha would score at Goodison six days after the Arsenal contest.
In the 1-0 win, Mateusz Klich's decision to support the wide players meant Everton's midfielders pulled out to the touchline too, but failed to notice Raphinha operating centrally. This left acres of space for the Brazilian, illustrated above.
With one pass from Jack Harrison into Raphinha's feet, five Evertonians were out of the game, each having swarmed around Harrison, Ayling and Klich on the right-hand side.
James Rodriguez was too far away to pressure Raphinha, unlike Reiss Nelson who was charging back in the Arsenal game, meaning the 23-year-old could open his body and pick his spot.
Time and again, Leeds have utilised this move down the right-hand side. It has caused problems for each opponent they have faced and paid dividends against Everton in a game which should have seen Leeds score more than their solitary goal.
Whether this will be used in future remains to be seen but it is a tactic that is currently working, against all manner of opponents. Marcelo Bielsa has certainly identified a pattern of play that works for his Leeds side and it can be expected to crop up again between now and the end of the season.
