There are several reasons why Jesse Marsch got sacked after almost a year of his appointment as Marcelo Bielsa’s successor. Their poor defence is a massive issue to why they don’t win games: they are top five in the premier league of goals conceded, inconsistencies of building on good performances, failure to hold on to leads and poor conversion rate.
Leeds beat Chelsea 3-0 where they had a great and convincing performance. After, this game a lot of Leeds fans had a lot of hope heading into future games. However, they went into an eight games streak without a win. Leeds then beat Liverpool at Anfield then beat Bournemouth at Elland Road after being 3-1 down, their first back to back wins this season. But, they are seven games without a win in the Premier League. They failed to build consistency on good performances which is why they are seventeenth in the league.
One of the worst defensive disaster class from Leeds this season is a 5-2 loss to Brentford. They actually had more shots than Brentford but failed to capitalise on their chances. They also had a significantly higher possession of the ball but they made a lot of defensive errors like misplacing heading clearances, fouling in the penalty box in the game that Brentford capitalised on especially by Ivan Toney who got a hat-trick. Another game where poor defending costed Leeds the victory is against Spurs, goalkeeping mistakes from Meslier against Ben Davies to make it 2-2 and failure to man mark the opposition like the game winning goal where no body tracked Bentancur and he slotted an open goal. Leeds were leading three times in this game but defensive mistakes meant they couldn’t walk away with even one point as Bentancur made it 4-3.
Leeds does score decent amount of goals: they are ranked eleventh in the league. However, their conversion rate compared to their defensive liabilities is not good enough. They had 17 shots against Brentford but only scored two, against Arsenal they had 16 shots compared to Arsenal’s nine but they didn’t score. The same trend continues to Jesse Marsch’s last game which is a 1-0 loss against Nottingham Forest: they had 10 shots compared to Forest’s six and 70% possession with zero goals.
There are a lot of games where the same problems occurs but what’s the most alarming is their inability to hold on to leads, this is where Jesse’s managerial skills comes to questioning. They have not been able won five of their games when they were ahead: Southampton away, Fulham at home, Crystal Palace away, Spurs away and West Ham at home. They were two-nil up against Southampton but failed to hold onto it and it finished 2-2, 1-0 up against Crystal Palace but the Eagles won 2-1, 1-0 up Fulham which finished 3-2 to Fulham, 1-0 up against Spurs which then became 2-1 to Leeds then 3-2 to Leeds finished 4-3 to spurs and again 1-0 up against West Ham which finished 2-2.
Leeds had several issues which led to Marsch’s sacking but his inability to set the team up correctly to keep the lead ended up costing his team too many points which puts them just three points above bottom placed Southampton.