TACTICAL BREAKDOWN: Whatever Daniel Farke said at half-time brought about a more effective, if not sustained, change of playing style

Daniel Farke's only critique of Leeds United’s display against Manchester United was their composure in front of goal.

“The problem was there were too many strikes over the crossbar and too many crosses were then even a bit too long,” he said, following the 1-1 draw. “These situations killed a bit of our momentum.”

Goalscorer Dominic Calvert-Lewin said he felt Leeds did everything right up until the final third while Tarik Muharemovic suggested the “hunger” was not quite there prior to Man Utd going ahead.

Leeds only directed 41% of their 12 shots on target with five of these inaccurate efforts coming from within the penalty area. In theory, that’s quite high when being so close to goal.

The first thing to note is that Leeds did manage to get in and around the box. All but two of their efforts came from within the penalty area and Ao Tanaka’s longer-range efforts were around the D.

Make sure you never miss the latest Leeds United news and opinion by making Leeds Live one of your Google preferred sources.

But when we look at the xG metrics for the shots inside the area, they were low. In fact, besides the equaliser, Anton Stach’s blocked shot off Noussair Mazraoui was the highest xG rating and that was only 0.26.

For the chances that were skewed off target - such as Noah Okafor’s chest and strike, and Tanaka’s volley - the highest xG score was 0.064; Calvert-Lewin’s harmless diving header, for which he looked offside anyway.

So the chances Leeds missed inside the area were not gimmes. Calvert-Lewin’s goal itself only had an xG of 0.6, so was by no means a formality. That was his only shot on target out of three attempts.

Calvert-Lewin’s goal intentions were frustrated in the first 45 minutes mostly due to Leeds’ right-side preference. Below is the first half touchmap for the whole Leeds team in the final third.

This is emphasised by the following chart, with more than 42% of Leeds’ attacks coming down the right before half time. This was no coincidence.

Calvert-Lewin’s average position all game was not central but instead very close to Stach, the right-sided number 10.

His first-half heatmap only further underscores the issue - while the centre-forward did get into the box, it was not deep nor dead-on central.

After half-time, Farke must have instructed his players to put more balls into the box from both wings. In the first half, eight crosses went in - but in the second some 21 balls were swung in, one leading to the goal.

This is evidenced by the far-more balanced heatmap in the second half, for both Calvert-Lewin and the team in general.

The striker did find himself on the flanks of the box at times but when he was in the centre, it was in line with the penalty spot and much deeper.

And this is backed up by the better spread of the second-half touchmap.

And thus, Calvert-Lewin had two shots at goal after the break - again, underlining the lack of opportunities he was given but showing marginal progress.

Leeds ultimately found their equaliser, even if they failed to continue their dominance through all of the second half. Part of the said momentum loss aforementioned by Farke was due to inaccurate crosses, regular though they were.

None of the eight put in during the first half found their man. Just three of the 21 put in during the second period were accurate and just one was from open play.

So that’s a clear point of improvement. The upshot of all of the information above shows that Leeds did not create enough clear opportunities against Man Utd, and perhaps did well to even score one.

These metrics suggest that more balanced wing play is needed throughout the whole match and, obviously, that crosses need to be more precise - the visitor’s goal came from an open play cross.

The other matter is to keep Calvert-Lewin central. After all, that is where most of his 18 Premier League goals have come from.