The underlying data suggests Leeds are good enough to avoid relegation from the Premier League this season, but can they get over the line despite their recent goalscoring woes?
Despite many expecting Leeds United to struggle this season, history was on their side. They’ve never been relegated from the top flight in the season immediately after being promoted into it.
On seven previous occasions – spanning the 1920s up to their glorious return under Marcelo Bielsa in 2020-21 – the Whites have always avoided dropping straight back into the second tier, notably finishing second in 1964-65 under Don Revie and fourth under Howard Wilkinson in 1990-91. In the latter instance, they won the title the season after.
Overall, no side have ever had eight top-flight promotions without being relegated immediately at least once; Chelsea and Newcastle have also avoided the drop seven times along with Leeds.
With these historical omens on their side and just seven games of the season remaining, a four-point buffer to the relegation spots and home games against the sides in 20th (Wolves) and 19th (Burnley) still to come mean the signs are pointing towards another Premier League campaign in 2026-27.
But four games without a league goal and only two wins in 14 matches have left some fans understandably looking nervously over their shoulders.
The wonderful distraction of a long-awaited FA Cup run – their first semi-final appearance in the competition since 1987 – will be put to one side as Daniel Farke’s side navigate the final stretch to secure another season in the promised land.
Fears Increase After Poor Form
After beating Nottingham Forest 3-1 on the first Friday night in February, Leeds went nine points clear of the relegation zone.
Although they had played a game more than West Ham in 18th, this was a position from which only one team in a 38-game Premier League season had then been relegated. Sheffield United in 2006-07 were 10 points clear in February 2007 but were eventually – and controversially – pegged back by a Carlos Tevez-inspired Hammers side who relegated them on the final day.
Tevez may not be around now, but West Ham have dragged themselves back into the fight to avoid relegation. Before facing Spurs on 17 January, the Hammers were seven points from safety and eight points behind Leeds in 16th. They won that game at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and have had the seventh-best form in the Premier League since.
Leeds, though, are winless in six Premier League matches – their worst run of the season – and have gone four games without a goal for the first time since March 2022, which encompassed the final two games of the Bielsa reign and the first two under Jesse Marsch.
The gap between Leeds and West Ham now stands at just four points. With the Hammers facing bottom side Wolves on Friday night and Leeds not playing until Monday, there could be only one point in it by the time they kick off at Old Trafford – although by that time, Spurs could have dropped into the relegation zone, depending on what result they get at Sunderland on Sunday.
There seems no need to panic just yet, but Leeds could really do with their number nine finding his December form…
Can They Rely on Calvert-Lewin?
After seven seasons wearing the Leeds United number nine shirt, Patrick Bamford departed the club early in the 2025-26 season, bringing an end to a rollercoaster stint at the club.
Although Bamford had scored 16 goals in the Championship-winning campaign of 2019-20, the chances he didn’t take still followed him around. That season saw him miss 34 Opta-defined ‘big chances’ (opportunities a player would reasonably be expected to score), the second most by a player in a Championship season on record (since 2013-14).
An incredible 17-goal Premier League season in 2020-21 earned Bamford his sole England cap in September 2021, but, by the end of the following season, Leeds were relegated with Bamford missing crucial chances against Leicester and Newcastle in the run-in.
Echoing Bamford’s career, Dominic Calvert-Lewin also enjoyed his standout season in 2020-21, scoring 16 Premier League goals. In the four seasons at Everton that followed, he ended with five, two, seven and three.
Between 2021-22 and 2024-25, Calvert-Lewin had the biggest xG underperformance in the Premier League, scoring 17 goals when he’d have been expected to score 32. He missed 41 out of 56 (73.2%) big chances, with only Liverpool’s Darwin Núñez missing a higher proportion.
Concerningly for Leeds, the season started in much the same manner. In his first 10 Premier League appearances for the club, Calvert-Lewin scored one goal from 19 shots – a fine header at Wolves – to give him a shot conversion of 5.3%. He’d had six big chances and scored none of them.
He’d also endured a tough night in the League Cup at Sheffield Wednesday, missing four big chances and then a penalty in the shootout as Leeds were eliminated by a team with an average age of just 22 and who have since gone on to win one out of 41 league games this season.
Then came the best scoring run by a Leeds player in the top flight since John McCole in 1960 as Calvert-Lewin found the net in six consecutive games, his conversion rate jumping from 5% to 47% over those six matches. All seven of his goals were ‘big chances’, missing only one such opportunity in that run, and by the end of 2025 only three players had more Premier League goals than he did.
He was denied a seventh consecutive goalscoring appearance by the offside flag at Anfield on New Year’s Day, and unfortunately that run of bad luck has continued.
Since his six-game scoring run, Calvert-Lewin has netted just twice from 24 shots and underperformed his xG by nearly three goals. It is the biggest xG underperformance by a player in 2026, though it didn’t stop him earning his first England cap since July 2021 when he appeared against Uruguay last month, missing a great headed chance late in the game.
After tucking away a penalty in normal time at West Ham in the FA Cup on Sunday, plus another in the shootout later, Leeds will be hoping this can be a springboard for a return to form in the league.
The Premier League’s Most Intense Team
Calvert-Lewin’s all-round play has been positively received by Leeds supporters, and his work rate has never been questioned. Only Brentford’s Igor Thiago has applied more high-intensity pressures to opponents in the Premier League this season than the Leeds frontman (1,879), while he tops the charts for those in the opposition’s half (1,372).
This is part of a general theme with Leeds this season. While high-intensity running was a hallmark of the Bielsa team, the current crop under Farke have proven themselves of a similar ilk.
Leeds have applied the most high-intensity pressures to opponents this season (12,556) and rank second for pressures in the opposition’s half (6,252) behind Everton. Only three teams have won possession following a high-intensity pressure more often than Leeds (1,680), while they have put 59.5% of their opponents’ touches under high pressure, the highest proportion in the division.
On a per-90 basis, only Everton pair Beto and Thierno Barry (82) have made more high-intensity pressures than both Calvert-Lewin (80) and Brenden Aaronson (77) this season. Seven of the top-20 totals for high-intensity pressures in a Premier League game this season have been Leeds players, while in the opposition’s half, the top two are both Calvert-Lewin (88 against Fulham in January, and 81 against Brentford in December).
Couple all of this with the fact Leeds have covered the most distance in the Premier League this season (3,560km, or roughly 84 marathons) they are clearly an extremely hard-working side.
Yash Thakur / Data AnalystA Change in Style Yields Results
After a promising start to the season, with Leeds sitting 12th at the end of September, the following two months were dismal. Six defeats in seven games left the Whites in the relegation zone at the end of November, a month in which Leeds lost all four of their games.
There were many calls at that stage for Farke to be replaced, and with games against Chelsea and Liverpool to contend with next, the German’s future looked bleak.
However, at half-time in the sixth of those defeats at Manchester City, Farke went for a change in style. Replacing wingers Daniel James and Wilfried Gnonto with Jaka Bijol and Calvert-Lewin, Leeds deployed a three-man defence with wing-backs. From 2-0 down at the break, they equalised with 22 minutes remaining and were on course for a priceless point until a last-minute Phil Foden goal stole all three for City. Nevertheless, the change of style had made a huge impact.
In the first half against City, Leeds mustered just two shots, no shots on target, 0.1 xG and had only five touches in the opposition’s box. In the second half, Leeds had four shots on target, 15 touches in City’s box and, of course, scored twice.
The formation was used again for the Chelsea match the following Wednesday – the first time Leeds had started a league game with wing-backs since the final game of the 2013-14 season – and it paid dividends. A superb 3-1 win was then followed up by a 3-3 draw with Liverpool, in which Leeds came from two goals down.
After being one of three sides without a single point in November, Leeds went through December without losing, with only Man City and Liverpool also achieving that.
Since 1 December, Leeds have earned 22 points, placing them 12th in the form table in that time. Only Man City, Arsenal, Man Utd and Bournemouth have fewer defeats than the four suffered by Leeds, with the seven-game unbeaten run coming to a difficult end at Newcastle; Leeds went 1-0, 2-1 and 3-2 up before losing to 4-3 to the latest Premier League winner on record. Typical Leeds, as fans would say.
The data shows a very clear change in style for Leeds since the end of November.
The emphasis on playing the ball longer – 14.3% of passes have been long since December, compared to 11.8% before then – has led to an understandable drop in passing accuracy (down to 77.6% from 82.1%) and average possession (43.9% since December, 47.5% before).
Leeds are playing far less in their own half, too: 224 passes in their own half per game up to the match at the Etihad to just 182 since December. That’s 44 fewer per game on average.
Players challenging for headers is also a more familiar sight for Leeds supporters. Up to November, there were only 32 aerial duels contested per game by Leeds, the 10th most in the league. Since December, that’s gone up a huge 13 per game to 45 on average, the most in the Premier League. Calvert-Lewin also leads the way among players in the competition since then, contesting 164.
Launching Long Throws
A reason for the extra aerial duels has been Leeds’ use of long throws.
They are not the only proponents of the long throw; this season has seen it used by many different sides to try to gain an advantage, most notably Brentford, Crystal Palace and Sunderland.
A total of 1,223 long throws have been launched into opposition penalty areas in 2025-26, more than in the previous two seasons combined. The average of four per game this term is the most on record in the Premier League since 2015-16, and by some margin. The previous most was 1.7 per game in 2018-19.
Before the change in formation – which has allowed Leeds to bring in an extra centre-half and therefore more height – they were only averaging 2.3 long throws into the box per game, and fewer than one shot (0.7) per game from those deliveries.
Leeds didn’t send a long throw into the opposition’s penalty area in four of their opening 10 games this season. However, since December, Leeds rank first in the Premier League for long throws into the box (97 – 5.4 per game), shots from long throws into the box (33) and xG created from those shots (3.59).
Football is clearly a game of small margins, so any advantage must be used to try to score a goal. But aside from their two goals in one game against Crystal Palace in December, Leeds haven’t scored from a long throw, putting 69 into opposition penalty areas without success since that Palace encounter.
That’s no slight on Ethan Ampadu’s excellent deliveries, but with just 1.6% of them leading to goals for Leeds, there are questions over whether they are worth continuing at quite the same rate. That said, they are showing no signs of changing tack in recent matches – they’ve put at least seven long throws into the box in each of the last four games.
It’s not just from long throws where Leeds have struggled to score; they’ve now gone 64 shots without scoring in the Premier League since Anton Stach’s magnificent free-kick at Aston Villa in February. Only Nottingham Forest have had a longer run of shots without scoring in the Premier League this season, enduring a run of 70 between September and November.
A total of 16 players have had a shot for Leeds in this barren run, with 42% of the missed attempts coming via the trio of Calvert-Lewin (11), Stach and Aaronson (both 8).
Keeping it Tight
While struggling to score remains an issue for Leeds, they are beginning to look more solid defensively.
Drawing games 0-0 to secure safety is not going to be popular (think of George Graham’s Leeds side of 1996-97, who had nine goalless draws en route to safety with just 28 goals scored across the entire season) but may be a necessity in certain situations.
The last two Premier League games involving Leeds have been goalless, the first time that’s happened since March 2002. They were welcome clean sheets, with those two as many as Leeds had managed in 26 games beforehand, and for Farke, it was just the second time in 80 Premier League games his sides had gone consecutive matches without conceding (his other run coming in October 2021 with Norwich).
The deeper defensive numbers do look good for Leeds, too. Since Matchday 28 started on 27 February, Leeds have faced the fewest shots on target per game of any side (2.0) and restricted Crystal Palace to none away from home despite going down to 10 men in the first half when Gabriel Gudmundsson was sent off. This was the first time on record (since 2003-04) in the Premier League that a team played a full second half a man light but faced no shots on target.
While their attacking data will be of concern to Farke, it’s been softened by their ability to restrict opponents at the other end of the pitch. Since MD28, Leeds matches have been the tightest of all Premier League clubs, averaging just 2.07 xG in total.
History on Their Side
The good news for Leeds is they have 33 points with seven games remaining; there hasn’t been a team relegated from that position since 2010-11, when incredibly both Birmingham City (35) and Blackpool (33) found themselves relegated to the Championship.
It was a season when the parameters for safety were most definitely raised. Both the Blues and the Tangerines ended the season on 39 points, but it wasn’t enough with Wolves in 17th on 40 points. In every single season since then, 39 points would have kept them both up. In 2023-24, Brentford won 39 points and finished 16th, a massive 13 points clear of safety.
Since Newcastle were relegated in 2015-16 on 37 points, the points tally for the side in 18th has been as follows: 34, 33, 34, 34, 28, 35, 34, 26, 25. In other words, in each of the last nine seasons, this Leeds side would’ve needed just three more points to survive.
That’s all academic, of course, given it’s what happens in 2025-26 that really matters, but Leeds would certainly have to count themselves unlucky if they earned 38+ points (in line with the the “one point per game” rate Farke has publicly spoken about maintaining) and still found themselves back in the Championship.
Burnley (19th) and Wolves (20th) have both been given a 99.9% chance of relegation by the Opta supercomputer. But in its latest 10,000 simulations of the final seven fixtures, Leeds were relegated just 6.5% of the time, less often than Nottingham Forest (8.7%), Tottenham (26.2%) and West Ham (58.7%).
The underlying data backs up this low chance of relegation, too. While expected points is not an exact science, it does give us a measure of how a team is performing across a season based on their xG at both ends of the pitch in matches.
According to Opta’s model, Leeds should have 11 more points than they do in real life and be on 44 points in 11th place, which would be 11 points clear of Sunderland (who drop in the expected points table). The only team with a bigger negative point difference is Wolves, who have an expected points total of 31, 14 more than their current tally of 17.
It will be of no comfort to those supporters worrying about relegation, but certainly the numbers show Leeds have been underachieving relative to their xG and general performances.
Former title-winning manager Wilkinson used the golfing metaphor “trust your swing” in the run-in to winning the league in 1992 ahead of Manchester United, and the same very much applies to Leeds in this season’s home stretch.
They have put themselves in a great position for another season in the Premier League; now is the time to trust their performances and earn it.
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64 Shots Without Scoring, But Leeds’ Premier League Survival Chances Hinge on Hard Yards Without the Ball Opta Analyst.
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